Lower Merion Merion Court employees stole traffic fines, says Da

Two employees in a district court in Lower merion It pocketed almost $ 7,500 in fines paid by drivers for tickets due to speeding, parking violations and other problems, and dismissed cases to avoid scrutiny, said Montgomery County prosecutors on Wednesday.

The crimes, which the district prosecutor Kevin Steele said that they would prosecute personally, diverted the money for state funds that support emergency workers and saved negligent drivers, including those who conduct without licenses or insurance, sanctions of the State Transportation Department .

“The significant theft and manipulation of the official judicial records by these defendants is atrocious and undermined the integrity of the judicial system,” Steele said. “We take these crimes very seriously.”

Lisa Shopa, 58, and Patricia Althouse, 55, have been accused of robbery, alteration of public records and related crimes in relation to the scheme, which the investigators said that they were postulated between January and October 2024 while They worked at the Michael Quinn district judge office.

Shopa, the senior employee of the Court and the Supervisor of the Office, and Althouse, an employee who works under it, ordered the employees of the office to grant cash payments of the Shop according to the sworn statement of probable cause for its arrests. .

To cover their footprints, the women erased the cases of the internal system of the court, marking them dismissed, a decision that only the police, the prosecutors or a judge are authorized by law.

Shopa recruited Althouse, the investigators said, so it would not be the only court employee who withdrew the cases.

Shopa resigned from his preliminary hearing in the matter and will be processed in the County Court in March. It was released with an unusual bonus of $ 10,000. His lawyer, Tim Woodward, declined to comment.

Althouse was prosecuted on Wednesday afternoon and released with an unusual bond of $ 5,000. His lawyer, Thomas Egan, also refused to comment.

The detectives began investigating the two suspects in September, when a court administrator reported that there had been multiple robbery claims in the office, said the affidavit.

While serving an order of order in November, the detectives discovered money on Shopa’s desk, without indicating what he was belonging for.

In an interview with Detectives, he admitted the robberies and said he began stealing three years ago, when he was under “financial tension,” said the affidavit.

In some cases, Shopa would only steal parts of the payments, the researchers said. A woman paid $ 450. 75 in June to solve multiple appointments, and Shopa dismissed three of the cases, taking $ 332.75 and properly transmitting the rest to the Court, said the affidavit.

In other cases, said the document, Shopa “would exchange” with drivers who had multiple quotes and larger fines, promising to “take care of” their cases if they paid a specific amount.

Initially, Althouse denied being an accomplice of theft, but told the detectives that he often had “excessive payments” for the drivers, according to the affidavit. But in a later interview, he said that Shopa would leave his notes written by saying how much money he should deposit at the end of the working day, according to the affidavit. Althouse said he understood that anything leftover was “his part of the stolen money.”