On January 13, 2017 Kimberly Christine Kelley-Jones entered a plea of guilty to the charge of bad check less than $1,000. The offense occurred on June 3, 2016 when Ms. Kelley-Jones passed a check for $529.55 at Harris Marine Financing in Stevensville, her account had insufficient funds. The check was for an automobile title and registration.
On February 14, 2017 Ms. Kelley-Jones entered a guilty plea to the charges of bad check over $1,000. The offense occurred on August 31, 2016 when Ms. Kelley-Jones passed a check for $1,600 to the landlord of a rental property. The account had insufficient funds. Additionally, Ms. Kelley-Jones wrote a subsequent bad check for a security deposit on the property. Ms. Kelley-Jones had also moved into this property and then failed to both make good on the bad checks or pay any additional rent, forcing the homeowner to begin landlord/tenant eviction proceedings in the District Court.
The aforementioned convictions also violated Ms. Kelley-Jones’s probation from a previous theft over $1,000 conviction that involved another rental property in which several bad checks were issued for rent and a security deposit. In this case Kelley-Jones was originally sentenced to 10 years in prison, but the sentence was suspended with all but 18 months to serve in the Queen Anne’s County Detention Center and she was placed on 5 years probation.
On February 14, 2017, Ms. Kelley-Jones received a sentence of 7 years to serve in the Division of Corrections related to the violation of probation case. In the bad check over $1,000 case she was sentenced to an additional 30 months in prison and in the bad check case under $1,000 she was sentenced to a one year and 1 day sentence. All sentences are to run consecutively, meaning she will have to finish serving one sentence before she moves onto the service of the others.
On April 4, 2017, Ms. Kelley-Jones also entered a guilty plea to Public Assistance Fraud. She received a 3 year concurrent sentence (to run along with) the previously mentioned prison sentences. Ms. Kelley-Jones was receiving supplemental nutrition benefits from the Queen Anne’s County Department of Social Services in which Ms. Kelley-Jones failed to report income she was making at the time of receiving benefits, thus obtaining over $6,000 worth of public assistance that she should not have been entitled to.
Deputy State’s Attorney Christine Dulla prosecuted all of these matters against Ms. Kelley-Jones.