The executive administrator of the Wood River Valley chapter of the National Alliance on Mental Illness pleaded guilty Monday to a felony fraud charge in Boise.
Carla Jean Young’s guilty plea averted a jury trial that was scheduled to start Tuesday. According to Ada County court records, Young pleaded guilty to the felony crime of fraudulent possession of a financial transaction card.
Sentencing was scheduled for 9 a.m. on Sept. 30 before Judge Thomas F. Neville.
Young’s employment status with NAMI was not clear on Tuesday afternoon because local NAMI officials had not responded to several emails or telephone calls from the Idaho Mountain Express.
She was hired as the nonprofit organization’s executive administrator in November 2012. Prior to that, Young was employed as the office manager for the Boise Chapter of NAMI.
Young has retained her position with the Wood River Valley NAMI chapter throughout the time that the felony charge had been pending against her in Boise.
Young, then 51, was arrested on that charge on Dec. 5, 2012, and was released later that day after posting $20,000 bond.
The arrest followed a warrant issued on Oct. 12, 2012, stemming from an investigation by the Boise Police Department.
A news release on the Boise police website states that the arrest warrant against Young “stems from an ongoing investigation into the use of a credit card to defraud a local business of funds starting in 2010. Evidence indicates the suspect, who was an employee at the time, obtained the credit card through fraudulent means and used it to obtain more than $10,000 worth of goods and services over the past few years.”
The news release did not state the name of Young’s employer when the crime was committed and Boise police have declined to release that information. A probable-cause affidavit, which would have provided more details of the crime, is not available in Young’s Ada County court file.
According to court records, Young had a prior felony conviction in 1995, when she pleaded guilty to the crime of “grand theft by authorized control.” Ada County court records, available online through the Idaho Supreme Court website, state that for that crime she was given a suspended five-year prison sentence and placed on probation for five years.
Terry Smith: tsmith@mtexpress.com
