Fmr. Dallas County Sheriff’s Employee Sentenced for Stealing $250k From Jail’s Commissary Fund

A former Dallas County Sheriff’s Office supervisor who embezzled more than $250,000 from the jail’s inmate property fund was sentenced today to almost three years in federal prison, announced U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of Texas Leigha Simonton.

Umeka Treymane Myers, 50, was charged via criminal information on April 28. She pleaded guilty to theft from a program receiving federal funds in June 2022 and was sentenced Monday to 33 months in prison by Chief U.S. District Judge David Godbey, who also ordered her to pay $429,640.66 in restitution.

"For three years, Ms. Myers callously took advantage of a program receiving federal funds to support her personal bank account. Further, as a supervisor in a government role, she also selfishly risked damaging the credibility of hard-working civil servants that support our county infrastructure," said Dallas FBI Special Agent in Charge Chad Yarbrough. "I commend our colleagues at Dallas County for their full cooperation in rooting out greed and corruption in programs that are funded by taxpayer monies."

According to plea papers, Ms. Myers worked as a supervisor at the Lew Sterrett Justice Center’s inmate property vault, which refunds inmates’ commissary account balances upon their release.

When an inmate’s account contains more than $30, property vault employees give them the balance on debit cards generated by software from the Keef Group.

If an employee makes an error processing a debit card, the software generates an error message, which only a lead clerk or supervisor (such as Myers), can clear.

After overriding a debit card error, however, Ms. Myers used released inmates’ book-in numbers to create new and duplicate debit cards, then entered the same amount from the card issued to the released inmate on to the newly created card.

Between 2018 and 2021, she fraudulently issued dozens of debit cards, which she used in Texas, Louisiana, Nevada, Maryland, and New York. (Her spending was confirmed by Winstar, Choctaw, and Margaritaville casino records, Southwest Airlines records, Bank of America ATM surveillance footage, and personal bank records.)

Ms. Myers has been ordered to report to prison on Monday, Sept. 11.

The Federal Bureau of Investigation’s Dallas Field Office conducted the investigation with the full cooperation of the Dallas County Sheriff’s Office. Assistant U.S. Attorney Marcus Busch prosecuted the case