Woman sentenced to probation for stealing $62,000 from Valley Learning Center

EVANSTON (WNE) — A Mountain View woman who admitted to embezzling more than $60,000 from the Valley Learning Center when she was employed as the organization’s office manager was sentenced on Thursday, March 5.

Jamie Allyn, 41, initially pleaded not guilty to a single charge of felony theft last summer but changed her plea to guilty in December in hopes of avoiding jail time, which she will under strict parameters.

“This process should hurt,” Third District Court Judge James Kaste told Allyn during the proceeding. “It should be painful making those payments every month because the victims feel it every day.”

A tearful Allyn offered sweeping apologies to the VLC, her family and friends and “the entire community.”

VLC Executive Director Amy Jensen offered the first of two victim statements.

“I trusted her,” she said, expressing a deep sense of betrayal because, in addition to working alongside each other, the two of them became friends. 

She said Allyn made concerted efforts to keep statements unavailable and even “fabricated” them at times.

Uinta County School District #4 Board Chair Aaron Rudy said he’s “quite ashamed it’s happened on our watch,” and that the theft was “the hardest lesson learned.”

Despite Allyn’s lack of a prior criminal history, Kallas declined to pursue deferred prosecution due to the “victimization of a population and people that put faith and trust into people to find it misplaced.”

The state’s plea deal in favor of a suspended sentence, however, was offered because Allyn is a widowed, single mother of minor children and because “restitution will not occur behind bars,” said Uinta County Attorney Loretta Howieson Kallas.

Allyn received a three-to-seven-year suspended sentence with three-years’ supervised probation, during which she was ordered to complete restitution payments to the VLC for the total amount of $62,095.12.

Kaste also fined her $10,000, the state’s maximum fine for a single felony theft. 

This story was published on March 12, 2026.