Former Cobb County Employee Guilty in Thefts

Staff Report

Cobb District Attorney Vic Reynolds announced Wednesday that a former Cobb County employee has pleaded guilty to stealing money from Drug Court operations.

Tomasita Reavis, 57, of Marietta, was employed as a clerk in the county’s drug testing lab. In fall 2012, supervisors became suspicious that money was missing, and agents from the Marietta-Cobb-Smyrna Organized Crime Task Force installed surveillance equipment. Reavis was soon seen on video taking cash from the cash drawer and putting it in her own purse, and she was arrested on Nov. 16, 2012.

Defendants who are ordered to take drug tests go to the lab for those tests, for which they must pay a fee. Tests typically cost about $25.

On Wednesday morning, Reavis pleaded guilty to six counts of theft by taking.

Deputy Chief Assistant District Attorney Jason Saliba asked Judge Frank Cox to sentence Reavis to serve four years in prison.

“In one instance, she took several hundred dollars from the cash box, and then went back to get $20 for her lunch money,” Saliba said in a statement. “And she won’t say what she did with the money.”

Reynolds added, “This was a government employee taking public funds. We believed a prison sentence was appropriate.”

Cox, however, sentenced Reavis to what he described as “an extremely lenient” six months in jail and 10 years of probation, and ordered restitution of $2,055. Cox said he wanted to send a message that employees can’t steal from a government agency.

Ms. Reavis has been free on bond since shortly after her arrest, and Cox gave her until June 23 to turn herself in at the jail. She was represented by attorney Ray Gary, Jr., of Marietta.