(Karen Madden, USA TODAY NETWORK – Wisconsin) A 52-year-old Marshfield woman is facing eight felony and 24 misdemeanor charges in Wood and Marathon counties after officials found someone stealing from clients at two Marshfield care providing businesses.
Jennifer M. Lueck faces felony charges of unauthorized use of a an entity’s identifying information and seven counts of theft of movable property, and 10 misdemeanor counts of theft in a business setting in Wood County. She faces 14 misdemeanor counts of theft of movable property in Marathon County.
According to the Wood County criminal complaint, the corporate director at Gateway Counseling contacted the Wood County Sheriff’s Office to report they thought Lueck had stolen from them. On Aug. 15, 2024, the director loaned Lueck $1,000 from the company so she could pay her rent.
Then, on Oct, 2, 2024, the director learned Lueck had taken $1,062.98 out of a company account to pay her rent, according to the complaint. Lueck had access to the company checkbooks because she was an office manager.
Lueck denied using the company money to pay her rent the second time. She said she was late with her rent and the management company must have taken it out itself when she didn’t have money in her own bank accounts.
Later, Lueck said she had surgery on Sept. 30, 2024, and didn’t remember anything she did for a couple of days after that, according to the complaint. Lueck also said the routing and bank numbers must have been saved in her cellphone app when she tried to deposit the first check directly into the property management account.
She said she hadn’t been able to do that and had put it in her own account and then wrote the check to the management company. Lueck said she must have accidentally used the wrong numbers when she paid her rent.
When officials checked the accounts, app and documents, they learned the numbers that Lueck referred to weren’t there, according to the complaint. Lueck also had worked for Clarity Care, which provides at-home care and residential care for people who need help.
One of Lueck’s responsibilities for Clarity Care was to purchase items for clients that they couldn’t buy for themselves. On June 5, 2024, the company officials reported to the Marshfield Police Department they believed Lueck was stealing from clients, according to the complaint.
In one instance, officials found a receipt for three pairs of shoes that Lueck bought for a client. Clarity Care employees tried to find the shoes, but they were not able to locate them. When they talked to Lueck about the shoes, Clarity management learned the shoes were not the client’s size, according to the complaint.
Clarity Care learned that one of the client’s debit cards had three withdrawals on it, one for $263, one for $190 and one for $150. The withdrawals happened in January, February and March 2024, but the client hadn’t left the client’s residence with staff since the fall of 2023 other than for church and medical appointments, according to the complaint.
When a detective talked to the client whose debit account had been accessed, the client said she didn’t know how to use her debit card to get cash. Lueck also used a Clarity Care credit card to buy the woman clothes, but the staff could not locate the clothes that were indicated on the receipt, according to the complaint.
On April 2, 2024, Lueck withdrew $100 and $80 for another client using a Clarity Care card with a notation on the $80 receipt that said it was for “shoes, haircuts or any other purpose.” A detective talked to the client’s father who said he had been notified that his son’s shoes were getting worn and he had used $140 of the money he normally sent to Clarity Care for his son’s expenses to buy two pairs of shoes.
He also said he paid for all of his son’s haircuts, according to the complaint. Lueck took money for pedicures and haircuts for clients in one of the residences, stating a salon had gone to the home to provide the services for the clients. When detectives checked with home staff, the manager said no one ever came to the home to provide those services.
When they checked with the salon, the salon owner said the business was only licensed to provide services at their own facility and would not have sent her staff to a remote location to do haircuts and pedicures, according to the complaint.
In one instance, Lueck helped a man who was not on disability to get disability payments. Lueck placed herself as a secondary on the man’s bank account and was transferring money from his account to her own, according to the complaint.
The man Lueck helped get disability payments received services from a management care company called Community Care. A percentage of the man’s disability payment was suppose to go to Community Care to reimburse its expenses.
The man was about $18,000 behind on his payments, according to the complaint. The man had received $38,126 in payments during a one-year time period a detective looked at. His balance in his checking account was $4.99 and in his savings account was $5, according to the complaint. The man said he had very little money.
He said Lueck told him his checks were being garnished, according to the complaint. When the problem was discovered, the man’s mother became his power of attorney. Officials went through 12 separate transactions made by Lueck for Clarity Care that totaled $906.
Items listed included kid toys, diapers, dog items, children’s clothes, a hose and reel and gas, according to the complaint. Lueck also took between $200 and $300 from a Clarity Care client’s account to buy a mattress. Officials learned a charitable organization donated the mattress to the client, according to the complaint.
The Marathon County complaint indicates Lueck embezzled $247.76 from Clarity Care and a total of $2,691.11 from 13 at-risk clients. When a Marshfield detective talked to Lueck about all the discrepancies in her purchases, she at first said staff must have thrown things out or that she didn’t understand the discrepancies and would check her receipts.
Later, she admitted to not telling the whole truth on some of the items, but she said she was afraid because of an experience with police 22 years earlier that led to her doing jail time for something she said she didn’t do, according to the complaint.
Lueck also said she had post-traumatic stress disorder from the military. She said she had a heart attack and has a tumor in her stomach that needs to be removed, according to the complaint. She told the detective she was having nightmares because of the investigation.
Lueck is scheduled to make her initial appearance in Marathon County on March 19 and her initial appearance in Wood County on April 6.
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