Longtime employee pleads guilty to defrauding bank, customers

KENT — Betty Pacocha, 75, a Kent resident, pleaded guilty July 21 to bank fraud before United States District Judge Mark Kravitz in New Haven.

According to a press release issued by Tom Carson from the United States Department of Justice, Pacocha started with the NewMil Bank at 19 Main St.  in New Milford in 1961.

Over the next 35 years, Pacocha was employed as a teller, branch manager, vice president, compliance officer, executive vice president and secretary of the bank.

She continued to work at the bank when it merged with Webster Bank in October 2006.

During her plea in court, she revealed that during her years at the bank, she defrauded the company by removing funds from customer certificate of deposit (CD) accounts and converting the funds to her own use.

She achieved this by either completely closing the CDs or reducing them in value. Pacocha also kept detailed records of her activities in order to track when each CD was nearing maturity. She would then restore the balance of the CD with funds from other accounts, to keep perpetuating the scheme.

The government believes Pacocha has defrauded NewMil Bank/Webster Bank of $722,817.18.

Pacocha has made restitution to the bank from her retirement pension.

Judge Kravitz has scheduled sentencing for Friday, Oct. 9, at  the District Court in New Haven.

Pacocha faces a maximum sentence of 30 years in jail and a fine of $1.4 million.

Latest News

South Kent School’s unofficial March reunion

Elmarko Jackson was named a 2023 McDonald’s All American in his senior year at South Kent School. He helped lead the Cardinals to a New England Prep School Athletic Conference (NEPSAC) AAA title victory and was recruited to play at the University of Kansas. This March he will play point guard for the Jayhawks when they enter the tournament as a No. 4 seed against (13) Samford University.

Riley Klein

SOUTH KENT — March Madness will feature seven former South Kent Cardinals who now play on Division 1 NCAA teams.

The top-tier high school basketball program will be well represented with graduates from each of the past three years heading to “The Big Dance.”

Keep ReadingShow less
Hotchkiss grads dancing with Yale

Nick Townsend helped Yale win the Ivy League.

Screenshot from ESPN+ Broadcast

LAKEVILLE — Yale University advanced to the NCAA men’s basketball tournament after a buzzer-beater win over Brown University in the Ivy League championship game Sunday, March 17.

On Yale’s roster this year are two graduates of The Hotchkiss School: Nick Townsend, class of ‘22, and Jack Molloy, class of ‘21. Townsend wears No. 42 and Molloy wears No. 33.

Keep ReadingShow less
Handbells of St. Andrew’s to ring out Easter morning

Anne Everett and Bonnie Rosborough wait their turn to sound notes as bell ringers practicing to take part in the Easter morning service at St. Andrew’s Church.

Kathryn Boughton

KENT—There will be a joyful noise in St. Andrew’s Church Easter morning when a set of handbells donated to the church some 40 years ago are used for the first time by a choir currently rehearsing with music director Susan Guse.

Guse said that the church got the valuable three-octave set when Harlem Valley Psychiatric Center closed in the late 1980s and the bells were donated to the church. “The center used the bells for music therapy for younger patients. Our priest then was chaplain there and when the center closed, he brought the bells here,” she explained.

Keep ReadingShow less
Picasso’s American debut was a financial flop
Picasso’s American debut was a financial flop
Penguin Random House

‘Picasso’s War” by Foreign Affairs senior editor Hugh Eakin, who has written about the art world for publications like The New York Review of Books, Vanity Fair, The New Yorker and The New York Times, is not about Pablo Picasso’s time in Nazi-occupied Paris and being harassed by the Gestapo, nor about his 1937 oil painting “Guernica,” in response to the aerial bombing of civilians in the Basque town during the Spanish Civil War.

Instead, the Penguin Random House book’s subtitle makes a clearer statement of intent: “How Modern Art Came To America.” This war was not between military forces but a cultural war combating America’s distaste for the emerging modernism that had flourished in Europe in the early decades of the 20th century.

Keep ReadingShow less