State v. McCoy

334 So.3d 1087

STATE of Louisiana, Appellee

v.Laquanisha Leroycia MCCOY, Appellant

No. 54,193-KA

Court of Appeal of Louisiana, Second Circuit.

Judgment rendered March 9, 2022.

F. EDWARD MOUTON, III , Shreveport, Counsel for Appellant.

JAMES E. STEWART, SR. , District Attorney, WILLIAM C. GASKINS , BRITTANY B. ARVIE , REBECCA A. EDWARDS , Assistant District Attorneys, Counsel for Appellee.

Before MOORE, COX, and HUNTER, JJ.

COX, J.

This criminal appeal arises from the First Judicial District Court, Caddo Parish, Louisiana. The defendant, Laquanisha Leroycia McCoy ("McCoy"), was unanimously convicted of theft of property having a value exceeding $25,000, in violation of La. 14:67(B)(1). McCoy was sentenced to 15 years at hard labor with five years suspended and three years of active supervised probation conditioned on payment of restitution. McCoy now appeals, arguing that her sentence is unconstitutionally excessive. For the following reasons, we affirm McCoy's sentence.

FACTS & PROCEDURAL HISTORY

In March of 2017, Santa Maria Produce ("Santa Maria"), a wholesale grocery distribution company, hired McCoy as a general office clerk. McCoy was responsible for assisting in office sales, which included taking customer orders and taking payments to generate order slips and invoices, in addition to general clerical tasks, including answering phone calls and filing paperwork. Thereafter, McCoy was also responsible for processing sales through batching credit card transactions.

On June 12, 2018, McCoy gave notice that she planned to terminate her employment. That same day, Charlotte Baker ("Baker"), an employee from Heartland Payment System,¹ the payment processor for Santa Maria, contacted Joseph Glorioso, one of the managers of Santa Maria. She informed him that their system flagged multiple thousand-dollar fraudulent and unverified refunds transferred from Santa Maria's account. On June 19, 2018, after Heartland confirmed that the credit card used and the account to which the money was transferred belonged to McCoy, Joseph Glorioso fired her and contacted Sergeant Jared Woods ("Sgt. Woods"), a detective for the Financial Crimes Task Force within the Shreveport Police Department ("SPD"), to investigate the incident.

After confirming that the credit card and bank account belonged to McCoy, Sgt. Woods interviewed McCoy a few weeks later. During the interview, McCoy presented Sgt. Woods with a cashier's check for $32,356.52 and a handwritten log she claimed detailed her work schedule and overtime hours. McCoy explained that she was overpaid for her accumulated overtime hours and wanted to return the excess payments. After further investigation with Heartland, Sgt. Woods issued an arrest warrant against McCoy for felony theft in violation of La. R.S. 14:67. McCoy was subsequently charged by bill of information, arrested, and released on bond.

On November 30, 2020, the three-day trial commenced, wherein the following witnesses testified at trial: Santa Maria owners, Joseph, Josephine, and Vincent Glorioso;² Baker; Sgt. Woods; Santa Maria employees Nina Glorioso, Greg Gander ("Gander"), Karen Maxwell ("Maxwell"), Megan Tilley ("Tilley"), and Christopher Mandigo ("Mandigo"); and finally, McCoy testified on her own behalf.

First, Joseph Glorioso testified that as vice president for the company, he was responsible for the daily operations of the business, including sales, purchasing, and food safety. He stated that in March 2017, McCoy was hired as a full-time office employee and was initially responsible for customer relations, sales, data input, filing, taking payments, and later, batching credit card payments. Mr. Glorioso explained that when credit payments were batched, their credit card processor, Heartland, would confirm the authenticity of each credit card transaction and transfer all verified funds into Santa Maria's bank account. He stated that on June 12, 2018, he received a call from Baker, informing him that approximately eight fraudulent transactions, totaling $78,933.02, were refunded from Santa Maria's account into McCoy's account.

Joseph stated that while McCoy, like other authorized personnel, would have had access to the credit terminal,³ where payments were taken, and been privy to the amount of money processed into Santa Maria's bank account, she would not have been promised additional money or authorized to transfer any amount of those funds into her personal bank account. He testified that McCoy could not have earned that amount of money as she was only paid $10.60 an hour and paid on a biweekly basis.⁴

Josephine Glorioso, president of the company, explained that although she only worked with McCoy in the office on a few occasions, neither she nor any other employee would have promised McCoy any portion of the $78,933.02 refunded from Santa Maria's account.

Vincent Glorioso testified that as warehouse manager, he primarily oversaw the daily operations of the warehouse facility.⁵ He stated that he would personally give tips to warehouse employees on some Saturdays as he saw fit, with tips ranging from $20 to $100 dollars. He explained that this gratuity was exclusively reserved for warehouse employees and that he never extended this offer to McCoy or any other office employee, regardless of how long they were employed with the company. Mr. Glorioso stated that he never asked McCoy to work unrecorded overtime hours in exchange for additional pay and tips. He denied that McCoy ever showed him a log of overtime hours or that he approved and deposited any money into McCoy's bank account.

Baker testified that she was a member of Heartland's risk management section for fraud detection. She explained that Heartland's fraud monitoring system flags certain transactions such as refunds or forced transactions as fraudulent until verified otherwise. She stated that on June 12, 2018, she detected a fraud alert on Santa Maria's account and immediately contacted one of the owners, informing him that she detected eight separate refunds to a single credit card without having a positive sale attached to it.⁶ She then confirmed that the credit card and bank account associated with the refunds belonged to McCoy. Baker stated that based on the type of credit terminal used at Santa Maria, all credit transactions were either manually keyed in, physically swiped, or chipped. Based on the information provided in the monitoring system, Baker then testified that each of the eight transactions was physically swiped by someone possessing the credit card in question.

Sgt. Woods then testified that he was the lead investigator for this case. He stated that during his investigation, he discovered that from April 2018 until June 2018, several multiple thousand-dollar transactions were refunded from Santa Maria's account into McCoy's bank account using her credit card. He stated that after he confirmed this information with Heartland, he immediately contacted McCoy, who agreed to speak with him. Instead, two different attorneys contacted him, claiming to represent McCoy. Sgt. Woods stated that on July 2, 2018, a few weeks after he initially spoke with McCoy, she finally came to his office for an interview.

Sgt. Woods stated that during the interview, McCoy presented him with a cashier's check for $32,356.52 and a handwritten log that she claimed detailed her overtime hours and schedule. McCoy admitted to Sgt. Woods that the money was deposited into her account, but explained that she earned a portion of the money through overtime hours Vincent Glorioso allowed her to work. She stated that through overtime hours, she earned approximately $46,576.38,⁷ and the remaining $32,356.52 was accidentally deposited into her account.

Next, several Santa Maria employees testified. Nina Glorioso,⁸ who was in charge of payroll for Santa Maria, reviewed McCoy's work schedule. She stated that in 2017, McCoy had a fairly regular work shift, working either slightly before or after 9:00 a.m., until 5:00 p.m. or 6:00 p.m., earning approximately $18,241.26 for the year. Ms. Glorioso testified that in 2018, McCoy's schedule remained relatively the same, but noted that McCoy earned approximately 20 hours of overtime for some pay periods and earned $13,825.84 for that year.

Gander, the quality assurance manager, explained that from 2017 to 2018, Santa Maria had two separate work shifts: morning shifts from 5:00 a.m. or 5:30 a.m. and night or evening shifts from 1:00 p.m. until 8:00 p.m. Because the shifts were divided, office personnel were never present when warehouse employees finished evening shifts; therefore, McCoy could not have worked late.⁹ Gander stated that, to his knowledge, McCoy was only paid through her regular paycheck.

Tilley and Maxwell, former office employees who worked with McCoy, testified that McCoy worked regular shifts with little to no overtime. Maxwell testified that it was unlikely that McCoy accumulated a mass amount of overtime because management restricted the number of overtime hours any employee could earn. Tilley testified that she rarely earned overtime and that office staff was never asked to work late or afforded an opportunity to receive tips.

Mandigo, a warehouse employee, testified that from 2017 until to 2018, he worked from 5:00 a.m. or 6:00 a.m. until 2:30 p.m. or 3:00 p.m. He stated that while he never saw McCoy when he arrived to work, he would see her when he left; however, he never knew McCoy to work extra hours either in the morning or evening. Mandigo further explained that McCoy would not have ever received tips because she was not a warehouse employee.

Finally, McCoy testified that when she was hired in 2017, she was never given a clear work schedule. With respect to her duties as an office clerk, McCoy testified that she was only instructed to be flexible. She stated that she was later responsible for general office duties, including answering calls, placing orders, filing, and taking payments.¹⁰ McCoy...