AUBURN — A Harpswell woman serving a three-year prison term for embezzling is at the center of a lawsuit lodged Monday by the Lewiston Ramada Inn against Manpower.

According to a complaint filed in Androscoggin County Superior Court, Maine Business Services, which does business as Manpower, recommended Carrie Richardson, 39, to Adamar Associates, which does business as the Ramada Conference Center in Lewiston.

Richardson was convicted last year of stealing more than $80,000 from the hotel in 2012.

A judge imposed a seven-year sentence in November, but suspended four years of that sentence. When released from prison, Richardson will be on probation for three years.

She pleaded guilty in September to a single count of felony theft.

In the hotel’s complaint, it claims that Manpower breached its contract by “failing to ‘recruit, interview, reference check and assign candidates who are best qualified for the work described'” when it failed to “adequately screen” Richardson before offering her services to the hotel as office manager and bookkeeper.

The hotel accuses Manpower of “fraudulent misrepresentation” by claiming to have screened Richardson for “employment suitability” and having checked her references before offering her services to the hotel. Either Manpower knew the representations they made about Richardson’s suitability for the job were false or Manpower recklessly disregarded the truth about her suitability and references, according to court papers.

She had worked at the Ramada Inn in Lewiston from January through December 2012. When the hotel closed out its books at the end of the year, the audit showed more than $60,000 in cash was missing, as well as $16,000 in checks that Richardson had written to herself, according to court records.

The stolen money came from cash that she failed to deposit more than 100 times at the hotel’s bank, and had pocketed.

The day she was fired, police said she went back into the office before leaving and took that day’s cash receipts.

Richardson was wanted on warrants out of California where she is accused of stealing roughly $100,000 from a Pop Warner football program in the San Diego area over a three-year period. She’s also accused of stealing nearly $50,000 from a business in San Marcos, Calif.

Richardson, along with her family, reportedly fled authorities in California. They left behind all of their belongings, including their pets.

Richardson had hoped to serve fewer than three years in prison, arguing in court that she suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder because she’d been sexually abused.

cwilliams@sunjournal.com