Dawnita Haueter, former manager of the Malheur County Fair, recently admitted stealing money from the fair and pleaded guilty to theft.
Haueter, 55, of Vale, made the admission in Malheur County Circuit Court on April 9.
Judge Lung Hung put her on probation for 18 months and required she repay $14,033 to the Malheur County Fair Board. She also was ordered to perform 80 hours of community service.
The fair board said in a victim statement that $17,000 was taken.
“The theft of. Over $17,000 has a significant impact on our meager budget and affected our operations,” the statement said. “The community has suffered from her act.”
Haueter was hired at the fair manager in January 2022 and then was fired in May 2023 from a job that paid her $45,000 a year. Authorities at the time wouldn’t explain her departure but confirmed a criminal investigation was underway.
That resulted in a grand jury indicting her last October for two counts of first-degree theft. She was accused of taking money sometime between Oct. 1 and Dec. 31, 2022, and then sometime between Jan. 1 and May 31, 2023. The charges were felonies with a maximum penalty for each of up to five years in prison and a maximum fine of $125,000.
She agreed to plead guilty to one count of second-degree theft, a misdemeanor punishable by up to a year in jail and a $6,250 fine.
In court, her attorney, Doug Rock, explained that for several months in 2023, payments made to the fairgrounds for rentals were put into Venmo, a digital payment service. He said the money was routed to Haueter’s personal account.
He said Haueter repaid the fairgrounds for some of those fees as well as other money “that could not be accounted for.”
He didn’t say how much had been repaid but county officials subsequently said there was no record of such payments.
The victim statement from the fair said the Venmo payments totaled $2,674, paid by renters of a mobile home at the fairgrounds. The statement said another $14,033 was “cash not turned into fair.”
When the judge gave her a chance to speak, Haueter said, “I’m terribly sorry.”
She hung up when contacted by phone by the Enterprise and didn’t respond to a subsequent request for comment.
