Charges against a former Bradford City payroll clerk accused of submitting overtime for hours she did not earn were bound to court on Wednesday.

Bonita J. Hillyard, 65, appeared for a preliminary hearing before District Judge William Todd in the Bradford courtroom of District Judge Dominic Cercone.

She is charged with stealing $9,749.61 through false overtime claims, as well as with attempting to steal $67,302 in pension funds, according to court records. However, officials have expressed suspicions that she took in excess of $100,000.

At the start of the hearing, District Attorney Stephanie Vettenburg-Shaffer announced that she would be consolidating 14 felony counts of theft by deception into a single count. Also, she changed the date range for some offenses in the criminal complaint to be from July 19, 2012, through July 19, 2017.

Hillyard initially faced 69 charges in the incident related to theft, tampering with records and the criminal use of a communication facility, but the consolidation brings it down to 56 counts.

Bradford City Police Chief Chris Lucco, the only person to testify at Wednesday’s hearing, spent nearly two hours describing his investigation while answering questions from the two attorneys: Shaffer, who is prosecuting the case, and Smethport attorney James P. Miller, who represents Hillyard.

Lucco said Mayor Tom Riel first asked him to look into overtime in the city — specifically by Hillyard.

“He felt there was some excessive overtime throughout the city,” Lucco explained.

Lucco started looking through the city’s records to see if “just on the surface,” her “overtime seemed out of line.” Through that investigation, he picked up on “a pattern of $15,000 to $20,000 per year in overtime. That definitely raised a red flag with me.”

Lucco then talked to city administrator Teri Cannon, who “did not have any idea of the amount of overtime that was being earned.” He indicated that Cannon must sign off on any overtime; however, Hillyard did not bring any of her overtime paperwork to Cannon, so Cannon had not signed off on any of it.

“I started requesting documents from city administrator Teri Cannon confidentially,” Lucco said, explaining they kept it quiet so employees did not become aware of the investigation.

They did a search for dental forms to determine if Hillyard was working outside of work hours as she said she was, but they found there were no electronic versions of the forms Hillyard created; she had an Excel document that she used as a template, which she would fill in and print to give Cannon. Hillyard would write the next document over the previous.

“There was no way to track what had already been done,” Lucco said.

At that point, Lucco installed monitoring software that looked at things such as keystrokes, website visits, print jobs, downloads and uploads onto the computer Hillyard used at work.

In regard to the monitoring software, Lucco noted, “This is a city computer on a city-owned computer network.”

During the time — which lasted from mid-May to July 14 — Hillyard claimed $3,142.82, he said.

However, there was no work done on her computer outside of normal work hours from 8 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. Monday through Friday except for one day, in which she logged in early to do personal business, Lucco explained.

During that two-month time frame, she would always submit an overtime compensation form with the day, number of hours, rate and wage. Screenshots showed she would alter the date on the explanation of benefits form to indicate she worked on them a different day. The new date would be the same as the date for which she claimed overtime.

Lucco logged nine date alterations during that time.

Among Hillyard’s duties was to handle dental billing for city employees, and on her overtime claims she always stated that she was completing explanation of benefit (EOB) forms related to dental billing.

“Not one EOB from the date of the install to the date of her arrest was done outside of her normal work hours,” Lucco said.

Yet she allegedly requested overtime compensation for nearly every pay period.

In fact, there was only one pay period in which she didn’t claim overtime, according to Lucco. He explained that Hillyard had talked about retirement to Cannon; they would need to train someone else to do payroll because Hillyard was the only one who had working knowledge of the payroll system.

That pay period in which someone was observing her, Hillyard did not claim any overtime.

But the pay period prior, “It was twice as much as the normal amount of overtime that she would submit,” Lucco said. Typically, Hillyard would claim $600 to $700 in overtime, but the week before she did the training, she claimed $1,365, he said.

In addition to being accused of taking money via false overtime claims, Lucco said, Hillyard was aware the overtime compensation would inflate her pension from the city, thereby allowing her to receive even more unearned funds.

Hillyard had not begun to draw on her pension by the time of her arrest.

Lucco explained that through the pension, an employee is entitled to 50 percent of earnings from their highest pay period in the past five years. As her earnings were inflated through false overtime claims, her pension pay would have been inflated, too.

An actuary gave an estimate of $67,000 for the difference in pension pay including her overtime and not including her overtime.

Eventually, Lucco approached Hillyard about the alleged thefts.

“I asked (Hillyard) to explain to me how she earned any overtime in the city,” said Lucco.

She mentioned reconciling of checkbooks — a duty she has that she works on outside of normal business hours. However, she is paid for that task from different funding, and the task does not affect her pay from Bradford City.

She told him she doesn’t get any overtime except when she works on dental billing. She said she completes the forms at home, prints them off and brings them to Cannon.

Lucco then confronted her with the evidence showing she was completing the work during her normal shifts.

According to Lucco, Hillyard then admitted to him that she had become bitter about her work due to changes such as added duties.

“She felt she deserved it but didn’t realize it had gotten out of control,” he said.

Lucco called the conversation was “very emotional,” which was apparent in her non-verbal cues, he said. “It was a very difficult interview. I’ve known the defendant for years.”

During the interview, “She asked me why I was doing this to her,” he said. “She didn’t want me to hate her.”

According to Lucco, Hillyard told him several times in the interview that “she’s not a bad person. She’s just bitter.”

Todd bound all the amended charges to McKean County Court.

Hillyard remains free on $50,000 unsecured bail.