Woman pleads not guilty to embezzling $720,000

RANCHO CUCAMONGA -- A former branch manager at a company that supplies San Bernardino County jails with phone cards and other materials pleaded not guilty Monday to embezzling $720,000 from the company.

Carmen Ascencio, 37, is accused of embezzling the funds over the last five years. She was arrested last week at her home in the 36700 block of Solvay Street in Palmdale.

A police report attached to Ascencio's court file alleges she embezzled money from the Rancho Cucamonga branch of Canteen Corrections in the following ways:

-- Falsifying invoices for inmate phone cards and cashing the checks for herself. (Total loss: $401,000.)

-- Underreporting vending machine sales at local jails and keeping the balance. (Total loss: $95,000.)

-- Stealing sacks of quarters meant for use by inmates in jail pay phones. (Total loss: $224,000.)

Ascencio remains jailed in lieu of $1 million bail at West Valley Detention Center in Rancho Cucamonga. She is next due Thursday in West Valley Superior Court.

Canteen Corrections is a subsidiary of the United Kingdom-based Compass Group, according to the report. Canteen Corrections provides supplies to many prisons and jails in Southern California, according to the report.

Ascencio managed the Rancho Cucamonga branch of the company from 1999 until she quit without notice in February.

"Canteen Corrections attempted to contact her with negative results because she had disconnected her personal cell and home phone," the report says.

Ascencio quit amid a San Bernardino County sheriff's department investigation into possible "selling and smuggling of contraband into the jail facilities," the report says.

The company completed an audit after Ascencio quit, and discovered she falsified documents in the course of embezzling $720,000, according to the report.