Wyandotte court staff accused of stealing $900K. Why’d it take 5 years to find out?
Why did it take five years for officials to discover two Wyandotte County District Court bookkeepers had allegedly, and illegally, pocketed almost $1 million in public funds?
Well, a federal indictment against defendants Julia Roberts of Kansas City, Kansas, and Vicki Robinson of Bonner Springs said they made concerted efforts to cover their tracks.
The federal government has accused the two former government employees of conducting a criminal, widely profitable wire fraud scheme and committing identity theft by allegedly writing and depositing forged checks into the Bank of Labor, a Kansas City-area bank with ties to labor unions that was founded by the International Brotherhood of Boilermakers.
What were the checks for? To hide the fact that they were pocketing incoming cash payments made to the district court. Part of their jobs included depositing payments from the district court clerk’s office into the Bank of Labor. Instead of depositing those payments, they kept them, according to the indictment. Then, they would deposit fraudulent checks to make it look like the money had been deposited.
“Between January 2018 and February 2023, Roberts and Robinson caused more than 400 Clerk of Court checks to be issued in amounts ranging from $189 to $10,000, each of which was designed to conceal the embezzled cash, which was never deposited into the Clerk of Court’s Bank of Labor account,” according to the indictment.
Roberts and Robinson, who federal prosecutors say conducted the scheme over the course of five years, between 2018 and 2023, allegedly stole $900,000 from the court system. A grand jury indicted them late last month.
They made their first court appearances last week where they pleaded “not guilty.” Both women are scheduled for a pre-trial status conference at 10 a.m. on Oct. 14, according to court records. Their cases will be discussed in the same federal courtroom before Senior Judge Daniel D. Crabtree in downtown KCK.
How’d they find out?
The operation was allegedly disrupted about two years ago, when the *Kansas Judicial Branch began transitioning to a statewide case management system and a more centralized form of payment processing.
Lisa Taylor, a spokesperson with the Kansas Judicial Branch, told The Star in an emailed statement that they found “questionable activity involving court funds” while they were moving the Wyandotte County District Court onto the new system.
“We hired an independent accountant to review court financial records and it revealed discrepancies that could be due to criminal acts,” Taylor wrote. “We reported it to the FBI.”
Previously, Wyandotte County’s district court managed its cases in the same system where it managed its accounting. People would submit payments to the district court that the clerk’s office would collect and deposit.
But after the changeover to the new statewide case management system, the government moved Kansas court payments from the district courts to a payment center run by the Office of Judicial Administration, Taylor wrote.
“Centralizing payment processing gives us important financial safeguards and accounting controls over payments made to and from courts.”
Access to cash
Robinson, who had worked in the office since 2020, reported to Roberts, who joined in 1997, according to their indictment. They both reported directly to Kristi Hill, the clerk of the district court.
In their roles as bookkeepers within the district court, the two handled its finances and managed the accounting department, collected and recorded county funds, made daily reports and deposited funds collected into the Bank of Labor account, the indictment reads.
People pay varying fees to the district courts, and those funds are dispersed broadly. This includes bonds, court costs, marriage licenses, ticket payments and several other services that people get from the court, Taylor said.
Any payments to the court that aren’t made electronically are given to the court’s accounting clerks, who get them set up to be deposited.
Robinson and Roberts allegedly manipulated records and moved court funds around to prevent their employers from finding any indication that they had taken funds.
“Bank statements were validated with data from the case management system, which contained manipulated records,” Taylor said.
Attorneys listed in the federal courts management system as representing Roberts and Robinson did not return phone calls and voicemails from The Star on Thursday. *This story was corrected at 5:45 p.m. on Sept. 13 to reflect that the Kansas Judicial Branch, not the U.S. District Court for the District of Kansas, transitioned to a centralized payment system.
This story was originally published September 13, 2025 at 5:38 AM.
