Former Seeworth Academy Superintendent Janet Grigg received a seven-year deferred sentence and was ordered to pay restitution on three counts of embezzlement today, concluding a three-year criminal case borne from the failure of a charter school founded to serve students impacted by the criminal justice system.
Oklahoma County District Court Judge Cindy Truong ordered Grigg to pay $41,473 in restitution at a rate of $80 a month, owing to Grigg’s limited income as a retiree. Truong questioned whether Grigg or her husband had assets or resources to pay a higher restitution. Grigg said she lives in a trailer. Her husband, Jimmie Musick, who praised the protections of federal crop insurance while serving as president of the National Association of Wheat Growers, said he lost $190,000 last year.
Truong took Grigg’s age and otherwise clean criminal record into account in her sentencing.
“I do not condone what you did, but for you to make it to 80 and not have been arrested for anything else, I will give you a deferred (sentence),” Truong said.
Grigg, 79, had hoped for a deferred sentence, according to her attorney Scott Adams, who said his client had not done “anything significant enough that should result in a conviction” when she pleaded no contest in April.
A sentencing memorandum filed by Adams on Aug. 18 — two days before a sentencing hearing that was rescheduled to Wednesday — echoed that request and asked for a deferred sentence, or one below the statutory minimum. The document asked Truong to account for Grigg’s “decades of public service, her continued contributions to the community and her ongoing medical challenges.”
Oklahoma County Assistant District Attorney Kirk Martin asked the judge to give Grigg a 20-year suspended sentence and pay $418,000 in restitution, but Truong chose the seven-year deferred sentence with no formal supervision and ordered about one-tenth of the requested restitution.
After court Wednesday, Adams said he is glad the case is over and that Grigg can move forward with her life.
“It is a set of circumstances that are a lot more complicated than what was presented in there, and the judge did absolutely the right thing,” Adams said.
Despite documented concerns, board showed ‘overarching lack of oversight’
Grigg served as the leader of the Justice Alma Wilson Seeworth Academy for nearly two decades before the school closed in 2019 amid allegations that Grigg had mishandled hundreds of thousands of dollars and that the school’s powerful board, which consisted of Oklahoma Court of Civil Appeals Judge Barbara Swinton, former Senate Minority Leader Kay Floyd (D-OKC) and Alma Wilson’s daughter, attorney Lee Anne Wilson, had ignored warnings for years about the school’s financial oversight.
An audit released in 2021 by State Auditor and Inspector Cindy Byrd concluded that Grigg misappropriated at least $250,000 in public funds that the school received. From the school’s corporate account alone, Grigg misused $41,000 at casinos and on retail items, according to the audit.
“In March 2019, when the board received a whistleblower letter alleging financial improprieties, the allegations were dismissed. Soon after, when an individual offered to donate $1 million on the condition that an independent accounting firm conduct an audit of Seeworth, the donation was refused,” auditors wrote in 2021. “The overarching lack of oversight by the board created an environment ripe for financial mismanagement and the misappropriation of funds.”
The audit was not the first time Grigg faced allegations of misusing funds. In 2012, former Seeworth principal Mongo Allen filed a discrimination lawsuit that alleged Grigg asked him “to shred receipt books used for recording the sale of T-shirts and concessions for Seeworth,” in 2009, according to court documents. In the suit — which the board agreed to settle before depositions were taken — Allen noted concerns that Grigg may have been “using Seeworth’s federal funds for personal use.”
Those concerns dated back to at least a 2008-2009 internal audit performed on the school’s finances, which identified “material weaknesses” and found records indicating that the school had paid $8,300 on Grigg’s personal home mortgage. Kerry John Patten, the CPA hired to conduct that audit, signed an affidavit for state auditors in 2021 about what happened when he presented the findings.
“I discussed the management letter and the audit comments with the board. The entire time I was at this meeting it seemed tense to me and after I began presenting, one of the board members said something to the effect of ‘Do we have to listen to this?’ I replied that they could either listen to me or read about it in the paper. They listened after that but argued every point,” Patten wrote. “When I left the meeting, I did not feel like I had helped that school at all and that none of my recommendations were likely to be implemented.”
In the September 2022 charging document filed by former Oklahoma County District Attorney David Prater, investigators alleged that Grigg embezzled funds and property from Seeworth Academy between 2014 and 2020, including school computers and a 2017 GMC Yukon. Grigg also was accused of paying herself thousands of dollars out of money approved by the board for staff bonuses and withdrawing cash from Seeworth Academy’s separate “corporate account” at casinos.
“A detailed example of Grigg taking money from staff bonuses occurred in 2014 when the board allocated $12,125 for staff bonuses but Grigg paid herself $7,000 of that amount (57 percent) leaving the rest for the staff,” wrote investigator Phillips Hall in the probable cause affidavit. “Grigg used this ‘corporate account’ as a personal spending account utilizing a debit card and checks as a means of purchasing goods, services and writing herself checks on the account to include withdrawing cash from ATM’s at local casinos totaling more than $4,500 and spending over $9,950 on purchases from home shopping retailers (i.e. QVC, HSN) over a period of several years.”
(Update: This article was updated at 5:15 p.m. Thursday, Sept. 18, to include additional information about the sentence requested by prosecutors.)
