ATHENS, Ohio — A former Athens County Auditor’s office employee has pleaded guilty to two felony charges related to theft from the county over a two-year period.
On Feb. 20, former county employee Kristen Andrews pleaded guilty to two felony charges as part of a plea agreement with the Athens County Prosecutor’s Office. She was indicted on the two charges in September 2024: one third-degree felony of theft in office, and five third-degree felony counts of tampering with records.
According to Andrews’ plea entry, she agreed to enter a guilty plea in exchange for four years in prison, with eligibility for release within six months under Intensive Supervised Release. The court also ordered her to pay $30,431 in restitution from her Ohio Public Employees Retirement System account.
According to Andrews’ judgment entry, Andrews is to report to the Southeastern Ohio Regional Jail in June. The court also ordered a post-sentence investigation.
A complaint dated Sept. 17 alleges that Andrews, a former deputy auditor at the Athens County Auditor’s Office, tampered with auditor’s office records “on or about” Jan. 29, 2021, and stole from the auditor’s office between April 7, 2021, and May 31, 2023.
The complaint did not include details of Andrews’s alleged theft, and details were likewise not included in subsequent court filings.
Athens County Auditor Jill Davidson declined to share the details of Andrews’ crimes but said she was “blindsided” by Andrews, who worked in her office from April 2020 to April 2023.
“I put my full faith and trust in my team,” Davidson said. “And in this situation, we had a bad actor.”
While the office has internal controls, “If folks have in their minds that they want to do things improperly, I’m not sure that there’s an internal control for something to the level that occurred in this situation,” Davidson said.
Davidson said her office has “spent an enormous amount of time reviewing” Andrew’s work, and she believes “that we have found most everything that happened.”
Andrews’ crimes do not reflect the auditor’s office, Davidson stressed.
“This is something that happened, but it isn’t who we are in the auditor’s office, and I believe that we have put the right people on our team to move past it and grow from it,” Davidson said.
Athens County Prosecutor Keller Blackburn did not immediately return the Independent’s request for comment for this story, or a previous request for comment on Andrews’s alleged conduct. Andrews’ attorney, Bob Toy, also did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
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