WICHITA COUNTY (KFDX/KJTL) — A former Electra Dollar General employee has pleaded guilty to stealing thousands of dollars from the store by voiding purchases and pocketing the cash or scanning items off shelves as returns and transferring the refunds to her debit card.

Police say Tiffany Christan Odell, 41, of Electra, estimated she took around $8,000 cash in addition to the amounts put on her debit card, from August 2021 to November 2022.

On Friday, September 1, 2023, Odell pleaded guilty in 30th District Court to the felony of theft over $2,500. Her plea deal was for five years probation and paying restitution of $2,977. Store officials gave police evidence of thefts committed by Odell just one month, including video from security cameras, receipts, and refund transactions that totaled about $3,000.

Police said Odell consented to talk to them and said she began taking money in August of 2021. She told them she knew what she was doing was wrong but “was backed into a corner with no other way out.”

She said sometimes, when customers made large cash purchases, she would wait until they left, void the purchase and take the cash out. Other times she would take an expensive item off the shelf and scan it as 10 refunds and load the refund onto her debit card.