A former employee accused of stealing $900,000 from a dental office in Mattoon to pay off credit card debt has pled guilty to the allegations.
Rebecca S. Gutierrez was previously charged in Coles County for allegedly stealing money from Hastings and Havlik Family Dentistry between June 2020 and September 30, 2025. The entire amount stolen was expected to range between $500,000 and $1,000,000. However, Gutierrez was indicted on federal charges in February, and fresh papers revealed that the amount she took was most likely closer to $900,000.
According to the indictment, Hastings and Havlik Family Dentistry established a business checking account with First Mid Bank & Trust, which processed account transfers using servers in a Georgia data center.
Gutierrez faced five counts of wire fraud. Each of these counts marks a time when Gutierrez took money and transferred it via interstate wire connections. On Thursday, July 9, 2026, Gutierrez pleaded guilty to all five counts.
Gutierrez started working as an office manager at the dentist’s office in the summer of 2019. According to the indictment, she had access to a business checking account, accounting documents, and notes related to that account at the time. The illegal transfers began approximately a year after Gutierrez began working at the office. According to the indictment, she made one to five transactions every month to pay down her personal Discover card debt.
She is scheduled to be sentenced on November 26, 2026.
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