$60,000 in Lottery Winnings Attached

An Anaheim woman charged with embezzling from her former employer must turn over $60,000 of the prize money she won in the California Lottery on Monday, an Orange County Superior Court Commissioner ruled Thursday.

Laura Jean Evans, 26, won $100,000 during the lottery’s televised “Big Spin” show. Twenty thousand dollars is deducted for taxes.

Jim Salzer, her former boss and vice president of Copier Concepts Inc. of Santa Ana, told Commissioner Thomas Keenan he saw his former bookkeeper on the show and sought the court order to have her winnings held by the county marshal until the criminal case is resolved.

Charged With Embezzling

Evans, who was fired by Copier five months ago, was arrested in June and charged with embezzling at least $45,000 from the firm between December, 1983, and March, 1985, court documents show. She has been arraigned on the charges but has not yet entered a plea, court records show.

In a sworn declaration submitted to Keenan on Thursday, Salzer said that an investigation by the Santa Ana Police Department and the county district attorney’s office revealed that Evans had been altering and forging signatures on checks and depositing them in her own account.

He said investigators determined that Evans had made out the checks, had them signed by supervisors and then altered them to be paid to herself. When the canceled checks arrived, Salzer said, Evans inserted the original payee’s name and then filed them.

“All I know is she’s caused me a lot of trouble,” Salzer told Keenan during an emergency meeting in the commissioner’s chambers.

Salzer’s attorneys said they did not talk to Evans on Thursday but left three messages on her home answering machine about the hearing.

She could not be reached late Thursday.

In signing the order freezing most of Evans’ winnings, Keenan said he would have felt more comfortable if Evans had been in court on Thursday. But Salzer, his attorneys and the deputy district attorney prosecuting the criminal case had not heard from her since Monday night, Keenan said.

“It’s not just civil, it’s criminal charges that have been made against her,” he told Salzer.

The court order allows the county marshal to seize $60,000 of the lottery money from Evans and have it deposited in an untouchable account pending further court action. If the state still has the check, which had not been determined late Thursday, the court order directs lottery officials to turn it over to a county marshal.