Connie Smith Davis, 45, of Lunenburg, pleded guilty recently in Lunenburg County Circuit Court to five counts of forgery of checks and was sentenced to 12 months to serve in jail, according to a release from the Lunenburg Commonwealth’s Attorney’s Office.

Fourteen more years were imposed and suspended upon conditions of good behavior, supervised probation, restitution and warrantless searches.

The release cited that Assistant Prosecutor Baxter Stegall reported that the offenses arose while Davis worked cleaning houses for two victims from September 2018 through January 2019.

Davis confessed that she had stolen the checks, three from one man and 18 from a woman. She said she wrote out the checks for $110 to $450, signed the checks, and cashed them at a local convenience store and banks for a total of about $4,000. She said she used the money to buy crack cocaine.

Davis was originally charged with 21 counts of forgery and 21 counts of uttering (cashing) the checks. She was allowed to plead guilty to five of the forgery counts. The remaining counts were nol prossed, according to the release.

As a result of the these offenses, Davis was also found guilty of a charge of possession of cocaine for which she had been allowed last December to participate in the First Offender Program, an option set by statute of the General Assembly, in which an offender is allowed to plead guilty but have the case deferred for one year to comply with certain conditions including good behavior, 100 hours of community service and counseling, among other conditions.

Since she failed to be of good behavior, she was convicted of the felony possession of cocaine and sentenced to five years suspended with all of the prior conditions re-imposed, according to the release.

Commonwealth’s Attorney Robert Clement said the jail sentence for the forgery convictions was within the recommendation of the Sentencing Guidelines.