Three Bears employee accused of $16,000 theft

PALMER — In just a year and a half, according to Alaska State Troopers, an employee of the Three Bears grocery store on Knik-Goose Bay Road managed to steal $16,000 from the till.

According to an affidavit that Alaska State Trooper Andrew Ballesteros filed in court, the theft allegations against Jami Umhauer came to light March 11 when troopers got a call from Umhauer’s boss.

The boss told troopers that two other employees had talked to him about what Umhauer had been up to.

“Jami had been performing return transactions on their tills when they were away from their tills for any period of time,” Ballesteros wrote.

The boss had looked at surveillance videos and caught Umhauer ringing up a return when there wasn’t a customer returning something. She pocketed the money she pulled out of the till.

In January when Umhauer went on vacation there was a big loss of money the day before she left and a big loss the day she got back.

Umhauer’s boss, “Stated that this was a shock because Jami was a cash counter and he did not think she would have done this.”

Ballesteros went to the store on March 12 and watched as Umhauer’s boss confronted her. She denied it.

“(He) explained to Jamie how she was caught and this was brought to his attention and again asked her if she was stealing, which she said, ‘I’d still tell you no, but if you would like me to quit I will.’ (He) told Jami that she was fired and she needed to turn in her keys and gather her belongings,” Ballesteros wrote.

Immediately afterward the trooper interviewed Umhauer, after reading her her rights.

“Jamie stated in essence that times were tough when she first moved to Alaska with her husband and children from the Lower 48 approximately five years prior. Jami said, ‘it was stupid on my part and I didn’t intentionally mean to do it. I’ll pay it back. I don’t want to go to jail,’” Ballesteros writes.

She said she used the money to pay down her debt and that times were tough when her husband was unemployed before getting a job on the North Slope.

“Jami indicated that the debt that she was paying back was $10,000 in credit card debt and a house that they were unable to sell for an extended period of time. Jami stated that she is currently out of debt and was able to pay back the debt approximately one year prior. Jamie stated the money that she had been stealing for the past year was ‘stupidity.’”

After the interview, Umhauer was escorted from the property. On her way out, Ballesteros wrote, she grabbed a package of AA batteries off her desk. An employee told the boss that she hadn’t actually paid for the batteries. So Ballesteros went to her house.

“I contacted Jami and advised her that I needed to retrieve the batteries that she stole, to which she initially acted like she did not know what I was talking about,” Ballesteros wrote.

She handed the batteries over soon after, saying she’d meant to pay for them but was so frustrated as she left that it slipped her mind.

Ballesteros’ affidavit includes a list of months between November 2012 and March 2014, and the amounts that Umhauer’s boss believes she stole. The largest amount was taken in July 2013, when $2,132.49 allegedly went missing. The lowest dollar amount listed was the partial month of March she worked before being fired — $248.63. Most months were more like $1,000.

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