Woman Gets Year in Jail for Embezzling $80,000

A woman has been sentenced to one year in Orange County Jail after pleading guilty to embezzling $80,000 from a shelter for battered women.

Renee Susan Marren, 32, of San Clemente stole the money while she worked at Laura’s House, a nonprofit shelter for women and children.

She acquired the bulk of the money by writing a $54,000 check drawn on the shelter’s account for a down payment on a house, Deputy Dist. Atty. Mike Fell said.

She also wrote checks to credit-card companies and stole a Ford Explorer sport utility vehicle that had been donated to the shelter, he said.

The prosecutor said that he considered Marren’s conduct to be “despicable.”

But he said that he did not push for a state prison sentence because she had repaid all of the money involved and had never before been sent to jail.

She pleaded guilty during a hearing at Orange County Superior Court’s South Justice Center in Laguna Niguel and was sentenced Friday by Judge Carl Biggs.