Sentencing Reset for Daughter of Embezzler

RANCHO CUCAMONGA —  Sentencing was postponed Wednesday for Priscilla Butler of Laguna Niguel, charged with receiving stolen property from her mother, who embezzled more than $1 million and gave almost all of it to her daughter.

Butler, 22, who pleaded guilty to the charges last month, made a brief appearance in the Foothill Law and Justice Center here and told San Bernardino County Superior Court Judge Charles Havens it was all right to delay her sentencing. It is now scheduled for May 8.

Butler’s mother, Betty Jo Sutton-Gibson, 42, confessed to taking as much as $1.4 million from her Upland employer by altering company checks made out to vendors. Sutton-Gibson, who was an accounts payable clerk earning a $16,500 salary, pleaded guilty to grand theft charges.

She told police she stole the money and gave it all to her daughter to make up for being an absentee mother while Butler was young. She is serving a five-year prison term at the California Institution for Women in Frontera.

Butler, arrested last August at her rented Laguna Niguel home, spent all of the stolen money but $220,000 in uncashed cashier’s checks on luxury cars, designer clothings and furnishings. She has said that her mother told her the fortune was inherited and the result of job promotions.

By pleading guilty she reduced the maximum prison sentence she could earn from five to two years.