A former employee of RBC Centura in Hogansville was sentenced to two years in prison and 18 years’ probation Tuesday for stealing $296,960 from the bank over a four-year period.

Anne H. Smith, 51, who pleaded guilty to theft-by-taking charges, also received a $1,000 fine and must repay the money at the rate of $100 per month or 25 percent of her net income, whichever is greater.

Smith had worked at the bank for 22 years, but was fired a year ago for unrelated conduct regarding her personal checking account and other matters. She then confessed to stealing the money.

“I just needed to get it off my chest,” she told Superior Court Judge Allen Keeble at Tuesday’s sentencing.

Smith, who had no criminal history, said she took small amounts of money once or twice a week and would “force balance” the vault and drawer. The auditors never caught on.

“I would say there was money in the vault that wasn’t actually there,” she said.

Smith, married for 29 years and the mother of two boys, said she used the cash “just to help my family and help pay the bills,” although her husband also was working at the time.

Her attorney, Bill Stemberger of Newnan, asked Keeble to impose a lengthy probated sentence.

“She was extremely honest about what she took and how she did it,” the lawyer said. “… I think everybody was shocked when they found out about this.”

Jenny Allen, the defendants’s sister, asked the judge for mercy, as did Cindy Janney, a friend since high school, and the defendant’s sister-in-law, Ruth Huckabee.

“This was such a shock to me,” Janney said. “Never in a million years would I have imagined this.”

Huckabee said she believes stealing money “became a compulsion” for Smith.

“I’m not really sure how this happened,” she said. “I can’t offer an explanation for that.”

Smith told the judge she was “very sorry, deeply sorry, and embarrassed for myself and what I put my family through. I wish I could go back and change this, but I can’t. … Hopefully I can go back to work and pay it back, as much as I can.”

If her conscience hadn’t taken over, the theft might never have been discovered, Keeble said. But he said he couldn’t justify a straight probated sentence because “it’s just too big a crime. … The sentence would be perceived as a slap on the wrist.”

“The problem is you stole so much money over so long a time,” he said.

Each time she took money, it was a separate offense, he said, so “in a very real sense you’re a multiple offender.”

Chief assistant district attorney Monique Kirby had asked for a six-year prison term and nine years’ probation, along with restitution.

Joel Martin can be reached at jmartin@ lagrangenews.com or (706) 884-7311, Ext. 235.