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Courtney Reese Ayers, 31, of Natural Bridge Station, entered a guilty plea in Rockbridge County Circuit Court last Wednesday to two felony embezzlement charges and one felony charge of writing a bad check in relation to unpaid meals taxes from the Pink Cadillac Restaurant.
Ayers was indicted on the charges by a grand jury in May of 2024 and initially pled not guilty before changing her plea as part of a plea arrangement with the Rockbridge County commonwealth’s attorney’s office.
As part of the plea, Ayers will have to pay restitution in the amount of $107,740.39 for the taxes that she owed. That amount will be paid in monthly installments of $5,000 beginning March 1. She will also have to apply for and receive a business license with the county, file reports for meals taxes with the Rockbridge County commissioner of revenue by the 20th of each month, remit said taxes to the county treasurer by the 20th of each month and comply with any audit requests.
The case will be under review for the next four years, with annual reviews of Ayers’ progress being held by the court, the first one scheduled for January 2026. If she remains in compliance for all four years, the bad check charge will be dismissed and the embezzlement charges will be reduced to misdemeanors, each with a 12-month suspended sentence.
At the hearing, Kari Munro with the commonwealth’s attorney’s office presented a summary of what evidence would have been presented by the commonwealth had the case gone to trial.
The evidence would have showed that Ayers failed to file reports for the meals taxes collected at the Pink Cadillac Restaurant between July 1 and Dec. 31, 2023, and Jan. 1 and March 31, 2024, and that previous filings indicated that the amount of meals taxes collected by the restaurant could be as high as $9,000 in any given month.
The evidence also would have showed that in January 2024, Ayers had written a check for $15,000 to the county treasurer’s office in an effort to make a payment toward some of the owed taxes, that she had been told that the check would be cashed the same day, and that when the check was cashed the account was found to have insufficient funds to cover it.
