Worthen Sentenced in OCAST Case

A former Oklahoma Center for the Advancement of Science and Technology (OCAST) employee entered a blind plea today in Oklahoma County District Court to 22 counts of filing false time sheets, Attorney General Drew Edmondson said.
Geneva Faye Worthen, OCAST’s former director of administration and personnel, was ordered to pay a $2,200 fine, court costs and restitution, the amount of which will be set at an Oct. 12 hearing. She also was ordered to forfeit her state retirement.
Worthen, 57, was indicted April 14, 2004, by the state’s Multicounty Grand Jury on 22 counts of making a false, fictitious or fraudulent claim for submitting 22 fraudulent time sheets. The indictment alleged she received more than $28,000 in pay for 885.5 hours she did not work.
The grand jury also indicted Worthen on three counts of witness intimidation. According to the indictment, Worthen allegedly filed a lawsuit against three people scheduled to testify before the grand jury “with the intent to prevent the witness from appearing in court to testify or to make said witness alter ... testimony ....”
Worthen today agreed to dismiss her lawsuit with prejudice, and at her cost, in exchange for the state dismissing the witness intimidation charges.