Mudbusters embezzlement case moves toward sentencing

PALMER — With attorneys fighting aggressively over what factors should be considered in crafting his sentence, a man convicted of embezzling more than $400,000 from Mudbusters Car Wash didn’t have time to hear how much he’ll have to pay back or what kind of jail time he’s facing.

But Superior Court Judge Kari Kristiansen did have time to hear from the victim of Steven D. Berry’s crimes.

“I’d like to talk about how dishonest Steve Berry was in his relationship with me from the get-go,” said one of the car wash’s owners, Karen Mahoy.

She noted that Berry showed up at her business when she was still in the process of opening it up. He said he needed a job, so she decided to hire him.

“The first thing he said to me is, ‘there’s a woman who’s pregnant and who I said I would help because she’s all alone,’” Mahoy said.

Later, she found out the woman was actually in a relationship with Berry.

“The baby was his,” Mahoy said.

She said that over the years Berry worked for her, their lives became intertwined. His wife homeschooled one of Mahoy’s children. Another woman Berry was in a relationship with cleaned her house and babysat.

Mahoy said her working relationship with Berry deteriorated long before the incident that led to his departure from the company — the crashing of a company truck and her belief that he was dishonest about it.

After he left the company in 2009, Mahoy said in court documents that the scope of his dishonesty became clearer. Coins from machines at the car wash had brought in $9,318.25 in 2008 before he left. The first year he was gone, 2009, saw a jump in deposits to $25,819.50.

“I thought I was a bad bookkeeper or something. It turns out he was taking my money,” Mahoy said.

Mahoy also detailed workman’s compensation claims she believes were bogus and led to an increase in what she had to pay for that program and what she believed were wildly inflated timesheets.

“Steve Berry is a master of lying and manipulation.”

As for the rest of the hearing, a lot of it had to do with what’s called a pre-sentence report. The state Department of Corrections prepares those reports for judges to consider a defendant’s background and criminal history in determining a sentence.

A lot of Berry’s report deals with actions discussed in his very heated, ongoing divorce case.

His wife claims Berry did everything from sabotage a generator to hiring someone to kidnap her to shooting her dog.

Berry’s attorney, James Wendt, argued that all of that is hearsay and that his client wasn’t charged or convicted of those crimes.

“Everything bad that’s happening is being blamed on Mr. Berry,” Wendt said.

But the prosecutor trying the case, Brittany Dunlop, said the standard of proof isn’t as stringent in a presentence report as it is in a criminal trial. She said she doesn’t have to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that Berry is guilty, just that a “preponderance of the evidence” tends to show he is.

“We could probe by a preponderance of the evidence that Mr. Berry did these things,” Dunlop said.

And, given that fact, she said, the allegations in the divorce are very relevant.

“Mr. Berry has displayed behavior over the last couple of years that give the state very, very serious case for alarm,” Dunlop said.

Contact Andrew Wellner at 352-2270 or andrew.wellner@frontiersman.com.