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Former Anne Arundel County Register of Wills Erica Griswold was sentenced Wednesday to two years of supervised probation for keeping and cashing a $6,645 check that had been sent to her office to pay estate taxes.
Anne Arundel Circuit Court Judge Stacy McCormack also imposed a term of 18 months in prison, but suspended the sentence, according to a statement from the Office of State Prosecutor.
At a plea hearing in June, prosecutors had asked for a sentence of 18 months suspended jail time, three years of supervised probation and 50 hours of community service. The maximum sentence for misconduct in office, a misdemeanor, is “anything not cruel or unusual.”
“Ms. Griswold betrayed the public trust and abused the power of her office for her personal gain,” Maryland State Prosecutor Charlton T. Howard III said in a prepared statement after Griswold’s sentencing. “Our agency will continue to seek to hold government officials who commit such transgressions accountable for their illegal actions.”
The register of wills office is a state agency responsible for overseeing estates and ensuring proper taxes are collected. Tax payments to the office are typically made out to either the office or in the name of the register of wills.
Griswold pleaded guilty in June to misconduct in office for taking a check that was intended to pay estate taxes and instead cashing it for her personal use.
Griswold, who was elected in November 2022, was charged in January 2024 with three counts related to the inheritance tax payment. The charges included misconduct in office; theft by a fiduciary; and theft of more than $1,500 and less than $25,000.
The charges stemmed from an incident in June 2023 when an employee asked Griswold about a $6,645 estate payment check that had arrived at the register’s office without an invoice. Griswold had been in office less than a year at the time.
Instead of trying to direct the payment to the right account, prosecutors say Griswold lied and told the employee she had been expecting the check. She took it and, six days later, she cashed the check at Chase Bank on Forest Drive in Annapolis “and kept the cash for her personal use,” according to a statement of facts in her case.
She was found out when the person who sent the check contacted the register’s office asking why he was still getting invoices for the inheritance tax after the check had been cashed. Prosecutors said employees approached Griswold about the check and urged her over the next several months to repay it, with one even offering to help her do so, but she refused.
Griswold finally repaid the $6,645 on Feb. 23, 2024, months after she had been made aware of the misdirected check and almost a month after she was indicted in the case.
Griswold pleaded guilty on June 4 to misconduct in office. In a statement posted by WBAL, she extended her “sincere apologies to my constituents, my colleagues, my staff, and my family.”
Within a week of her guilty plea, the register of wills office was declared vacant by Anne Arundel Circuit Court officials who tapped longtime register of wills’ office employee Jasmine M. Jackson to fill the vacancy.
