Former fast food restaurant manager pleads not guilty to theft charges

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Phillip Maugaotega (Photo courtesy of Baxter County Sheriff’s Office)

A man who managed the local Kentucky Fried Chicken restaurant is now facing charges of stealing $41,000 from the business during a five-month period.

Thirty-five-year-old Phillip Maugaotega appeared in Baxter County Circuit Court Monday and pled not guilty to theft of property charges.

According to investigators, Maugaotega was responsible for ordering funds from a cash management service. The service makes cash and coin deliveries to businesses, ensuring a consistent supply of change so that cash registers are amply stocked to serve customers with the correct change.

A regional manager for the firm that owns the KFC franchise in Mountain Home said a normal daily “change order” for the restaurant should have been about $750, but for a several month period, Maugaotega was placing orders for from $1,000 up to slightly more than $7,500.

It is alleged that when the cash management service brought the order to the restaurant, Maugaotega would put some in the business account and pocket the rest of the funds.

The missing amount was determined when totals were run on shortages detected in the restaurant bank deposits during the five-month period.

According to the police report, if Maugaotega had the day off, he would instruct employees to leave the money delivered by the cash management service in his office for him to process.

Maugaotega is alleged to have been on probation in Hawaii on similar charges. There are court records in various divisions of the First Circuit Court of the State of Hawaii in the name of Phillip Maugaotega.

In one case, the Hawaiian court records show charges against Maugaotega for first-degree theft and seven counts of second-degree forgery. He was listed as general manager of Papa John’s Pizza in those records.

He was booked into the Baxter County Detention Center on his local charges and then released on a $10,000 bond.

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