Wendy Askins
The Tennessee Comptroller’s office documented some of the lavish improvements taxpayers paid for at the main house where former Upper Cumberland Development District executive director Wendy Askins and her daughter lived at the “Living the Dream” independent, assisted-living facility in Cookeville, Tenn.The former director of a Cookeville senior living complex will serve 18 months in federal prison and must repay $300,000 for embezzling money to build luxury housing for herself and her daughter, court records show.
Wendy Askins misused more than $670,000 in federal funds meant for the “Living the Dream” senior living center in Cookeville, spending it on personal luxuries including $6,000 steam showers, a $25,000 curved staircase, furniture, televisions and more, according to federal prosecutors.
Askins, 55, the former executive director of the Upper Cumberland Development District, was sentenced last week in U.S. District Court after pleading guilty two two counts of embezzlement.
She also pleaded guilty last week to state charges of forgery over $60,000 in the same scheme and will serve one year concurrent to her federal sentence, according to court records. She’ll have to repay $67,000 to the state and $233,000 to the federal government.
The 16-count federal indictment filed in September 2013 charged Askins conspired with Upper Cumberland Development District deputy director Larry Gene Webb, 67, to commit bank fraud, money laundering and embezzlement, and lying to cover up the scheme.