Gary Keith Atchley, a former Olympian Village alderman, pleaded guilty Sept. 24 in federal court to embezzling $185,000 from the small town, which is several miles east of De Soto, according to court documents.
Atchley, 54, is to be sentenced Jan. 8 in front of U.S. Eastern District Court Judge Henry Autrey, a U.S. Attorney’s Office spokeswoman said.
He faces up to 20 years in prison and a fine of more than $250,000, according to the report.
In exchange for Atchley’s voluntary guilty plea to one count of fraud, the government agrees to dismiss four other counts at the time of sentencing, according to Atchley’s plea agreement with the U.S. District Court Eastern District of Missouri.
Atchley, who served as an Olympian Village alderman from about 2008 to 2016, is accused of using city funds to buy approximately $58,000 in personal merchandise with pre-authorized debit transactions, as well as writing $127,000 in checks from the city’s account for his own benefit, court records show.
Those purchases were not authorized by the Olympian Village government, and at no time was Atchley authorized as a “signatory” of municipal accounts, according to court documents.
“On one or more occasions between approximately March 2013 and December 2016, Atchley knowingly and intentionally used (an Olympian Village account) to pay personal expenses, including making out checks to cash, which he then negotiated, by writing checks to himself,” according to the “facts” portion of the plea agreement.
The plea agreement also states, in part, that Atchley “knowingly devised or knowingly participated in a scheme or artifice to defraud and obtain money or property by means of material false or fraudulent pretenses, representations, or promises as detailed in Count 1 of the indictment.”
When Atchley was indicted this past spring, a U.S. Attorney’s Office spokeswoman said the Olympian Village city clerk discovered the fraud when a check drawn on the city’s operating account bounced and the city clerk reviewed the bank statement and found the misappropriation.