by Bill Knowles
TRINIDAD — The Trinidad Police Department arrested and charged Consuela “Connie” Vigil with allegedly embezzling a substantial amount of money from cash transactions made while she was employed at the county clerk’s office.
The investigation was begun in January by Las Animas County Clerk and Recorder Patricia “Peach” Vigil. Patricia Vigil first became aware of the issue after a male customer came to the office on Jan. 25, 2021, to renew the registration for his vehicle. The male customer was told by Consuela Vigil he had accrued $100 in late fees because his registration had expired in in February 2020. The customer used his credit card to pay the balance of $808.91.
Later that same day the male customer’s wife arrived at the Clerk and Recorder’s office asking why she was assessed late fees on the vehicle. She stated that she had paid cash for the registration tabs in February 2020.
After the original transaction was researched it was discovered that the fees were paid, and the entire transaction was entered by Consuela Vigil. The customer had been given current registration tags, but the transaction was later reversed out of the system by “Connie” Vigil and then put back into the system again with all the fees marked as “paid,” but the cash was missing.
The system allows for customer transactions to show up as processed in the system and the customers registration would be valid, but there would be no report for it because all the fees were paid, and it does not show up on any “End of day” or “End of month” report.
Further investigation by the clerk’s office revealed this type of issue had occurred 72 times in 2020 and 70 times in 2021 by Connie Vigil and involved cash transactions for motor vehicle registrations only.
Transaction reports dating back to January 2020 and provided to police by the Clerk and Recorder’s Office indicated a total sum of cash taken by Connie Vigil to be $39,407.40 over the course of nearly two years. Some was used to help her family pay for personal items such as automobile repairs.
A change in the computer tracking system requires any transactions prior to 2020 to be retrieved in a different way and would be difficult to collect. And the Clerk and Recorder’s Office wanted to deal with actions from 2020 and later. Connie Vigil had been employed at the Clerk and Recorder’s Office prior to 2020, however.
According to Patricia Vigil, Connie Vigil has since quit her job. It was also discovered that Connie Vigil was also waiving late fees without authorization, a privilege that has been recently taken away from clerks and must be done by a supervisor.
Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the state was automatically waiving late fees from March 2020 through July 2021, so if late fees were charged, they would have had to be put in manually by the clerk.
The investigation also revealed that Connie Vigil had been waiving the “Specific ownership tax” applied to vehicle registrations, which is never allowed because those taxes are the money the county disburses to the schools, fire districts and ambulance districts, and the state of Colorado.
On Nov. 1, 2021, investigators with the Trinidad Police Department were contacted by the Koncilja law firm in Pueblo, Colorado and advised that Connie Vigil had retained an attorney and police were told they should refer any questions to the law firm directly.
Vigil was arrested and booked on charges of theft over $20,000 but less than $100,000, a class four felony; embezzlement of public property, a class five felony; abuse of public records a class one misdemeanor; and first-degree official misconduct a class two misdemeanor.
Consuela Vigil has bonded out of jail with a $15,000 cash surety bond.
