EMT accused of padding hours now faces felony

A Port Washington Fire Department EMT and administrative assistant was charged last week with felony misconduct in public office for allegedly padding her hours and, in some cases, logging hours for ambulance calls that didn’t happen or she didn’t participate in.

Lisa R. Theis, 52, who told investigators the discrepancies in her hours were mistakes, is accused of falsifying 121 hours of work, which resulted in her being paid $1,353 she did not earn over the course of a year beginning in September 2019, according to the criminal complaint filed in Ozaukee County Circuit Court.

Theis has been on unpaid administrative leave from the department since last fall, Fire Chief Mark Mitchell said. 

Theis was charged in January with two misdemeanors — fraudulent data alteration and theft — in connection with the alleged scheme but, based on the same accusations, prosecutors filed the felony charge on Friday, Oct. 8.

In a letter to Judge Sandy Williams filed on Monday, Assistant District Attorney Benjamin Lindsay wrote that it has become “apparent that the most factually appropriate charge given the defendant’s alleged conduct and anticipated defense (is) misconduct in office.

“The state is still making every effort to resolve these matters short of trial and has extended an offer to the defendant to resolve these matters in the misdemeanor case,” Lindsay wrote. “However, should the defendant reject the offer, the state would proceed on the felony case.”

A trial in the misdemeanor case had been scheduled for Oct. 18 but is now postponed.

The investigation into Theis’ conduct began when Mitchell told police she had been falsifying her hours.

Officer Taylor Russell discovered that Theis, the only person in the department responsible for entering call log data for the purposes of payroll, was inflating the number of hours she worked and reporting hours for calls that didn’t happen or she didn’t work on, the complaint states.

Theis’ hours were the only ones incorrectly recorded.

The Excel spreadsheet Theis used to track hours automatically calculated totals every time it was refreshed. Russell discovered that Theis would enter false hours, refresh the program to generate totals, then reduce her hours in the spreadsheet but not refresh the program so the totals still reflected hours she didn’t work, according to the complaint.

When confronted with the officer’s findings, Theis repeatedly denied knowing how her hours could have been incorrectly recorded. Later, however, she acknowledged that it may look like her hours were intentionally padded but said she had been entering additional hours for herself in the database to figure out her personal tax withholding after her sons graduated from high school and college, the complaint states.

During Theis’ initial court appearance in February, Williams ordered her not to work as a bookkeeper or have contact with the fire department, except in emergencies, while her misdemeanor case is pending.

Misconduct in public office is punishable by a maximum 18 months in prison and two years of extended supervision.