A 31-year-old former manager at the Rialto Theater in Spanish Springs has been ordered to pay $26,000 in restitution to his former employer.
Matthew Audet was accused of taking the money from the theater from February to December 2016.
Earlier this month in Lake County Court, Audet pleaded no contest to charges of organized fraud and grand theft. He was placed on 10 years probation.
He will have to make restitution through a payment plan of $220 per month, according to court records.
Audet is also to return to Maine to face a charge of violating his probation.
Theater management said Audet would wait for theater managers to go home for the night and he would process fraudulent refunds through an upstairs computer which would print out fraudulent refund tickets to the box office. Audet would then go down to the box office and take the refund tickets that he had printed out which were supposed to be attached to paperwork and he would dispose of the tickets. Audet would pocket the cash in the amount of false refunds he had created at the end of shifts, thus the amount deposited appeared to be correct. Audet would finish up the night and process and submit the final drawer cash and paperwork for the day, according to an arrest report from the Lady Lake Police Department.
