A Dunmore woman stole more than $56,000 over the course of three months while working as a front-end coach at the Honesdale-area Walmart, state police say.<\/p>\n
Neaola Peresia Smith, 42, faces 37 felony theft counts after police say she stole the money as she processed cash deposit bags.<\/p>\n
According to the criminal complaint, on July 6, state police Trooper Kenneth Byers began investigating a series of thefts at the Walmart Supercenter in Texas Twp., Wayne County.<\/p>\n
On July 17, Byers interviewed members of the Walmart asset protection team who told him that toward the end of 2025, Wells Fargo notified them of discrepancies in cash deposits received.<\/p>\n
Wells Fargo personnel receive deposits via cash bag that includes a receipt from Walmart\u2019s \u201crecycler,\u201d a machine in which cash is deposited from Walmart\u2019s cash sales.<\/p>\n
The recycler also releases the cash for a cash deposit. A front-end coach manager is responsible for processing the cash.<\/p>\n
When the machine releases cash, the printed receipt includes dates, times, who released the cash and how much cash. It is then placed in a money bag with sealed tape. Loomis Armored US collects the money bag and transports it to Wells Fargo. A chain of custody is documented for every transaction.<\/p>\n
Between Nov. 28, 2025, and Feb. 19. 2026, Wells Fargo received 37 cash bags with listed currency differences ranging from a few hundred dollars to a few thousand dollars, totaling $56,475, according to the complaint.<\/p>\n
The receipt in every cash bag with a loss listed Smith as the front-end coach who released the cash deposit.<\/p>\n
Following this information, Walmart asset protection employees conducted their own internal investigation, which showed that prior to Nov. 28, 2025, and after Feb. 19, 2026, the bank didn\u2019t receive any deposits reflecting discrepancies.<\/p>\n
Furthermore, additional cash deposits received between those dates but not deposited by Smith did not have any discrepancies.<\/p>\n
Walmart\u2019s internal investigation showed Smith on surveillance footage for every cash deposit that showed a discrepancy.<\/p>\n
The surveillance footage showed Smith releasing the cash from the recycler and organizing the cash into multiple piles. She then placed the cash into a deposit bag, leaving one pile of cash outside of the camera\u2019s view. No other person was on the surveillance footage, according to the complaint.<\/p>\n
There also were about six transactions Smith conducted on days she was scheduled off or on approved leave.<\/p>\n
Smith was eventually confronted about the discrepancies, denied any involvement and eventually resigned from her position. Prior to resigning, Smith processed a cash deposit with a $6,640 loss \u2014 the largest of all 37 thefts, state police said.<\/p>\n
Smith. of 134 Chestnut St., failed to show up for an interview with police.<\/p>\n
She was arraigned Sept. 9 before District Judge Jonathan Dunsinger. No preliminary hearing date has yet been set.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A Dunmore woman stole more than $56,000 over the course of three months while working as a front-end…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":293140,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[202,2136,7442,201,182,139,28,178,180,179,1481],"class_list":["post-293139","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-scranton","tag-crime-and-public-safety","tag-dunmore","tag-honesdale","tag-lackawanna-county","tag-local-news","tag-news","tag-pennsylvania","tag-scranton","tag-scranton-headlines","tag-scranton-news","tag-wayne-county"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/293139","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=293139"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/293139\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/293140"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=293139"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=293139"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=293139"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}