Kasson woman accused of stealing from Rochester hotel

A Kasson woman faces 12 felony charges after allegedly stealing nearly $1 million from the hotel where she worked.

Beth Marie Hansen, 39, faces four counts each of theft; theft by swindle; and theft by diverting corporate property.

She was charged by summons Feb. 28 and will make her first appearance July 3 in Olmsted County District Court.

The investigation began Dec. 19, 2023, when a Rochester police officer was sent to EVEN Hotel Rochester for a report of theft by an employee.

Hansen, the assistant general manager, had reportedly not been making hotel deposits to the bank.

According to the manager, company procedure required the cashier and Hansen to count the money in the drawer and determine the amount together. Both were to sign a ledger and deposit the money into the safe. Later, Hansen was to remove the money from the safe with one other employee, verify the amount and both were to go to US Bank to make deposits if the amount was over $10,000.

According to the criminal complaint, Hansen was dropping the money off at the bank alone, claiming she couldn’t find a second person to accompany her because they were short-staffed.

The corporate office informed the manager no money was deposited for December 2023; further investigation revealed the business was short approximately $100,000 for November.

The manager told authorities when she asked Hansen about the December deposit, Hansen first claimed she had deposited it the night before. The manager contacted the bank and learned no money had been deposited. The manager said she contacted Hansen multiple times and received a different story each time.

Hansen spoke to the officer who came to the hotel on Dec. 19, and said she had left two bank deposit bags in her office on Dec. 15. She later discovered one of the bags was missing, she told the officer, and all of the money — $110,000 — was stolen sometime over the weekend.

Investigators learned Hansen is a “known gambler,” and had paid cash for a new car with her winnings, court documents say; she had also recently bought a $200,000 house.

Another employee told a detective Hansen gave him $600-$1,000 every month for about a year and bought the front desk people dinner every night. He heard Hansen is a big gambler, and he thought “maybe she was lucky and winning.”

The man said Hansen called him Jan. 9, 2024; she told him she no longer worked at the hotel because she “left $110,000 in her office over the weekend and the money is now missing.”

According to the man, Hansen was “blaming everyone else,” so he told her to find the money and he would bring it to the hotel.

Hansen reportedly said she did not have the money, and “the truth will come out.”

The criminal complaint says the corporate office was using a reconciliation account for the deposits, and the “accountant of their property was just pushing it through.” The accountant should have noticed after two days of no deposits, the document continues, and has since been fired.

Several guests told the detective that Hansen asked them to pay cash in order to get hotel reward points.

Further investigation indicates multiple deposit slips and cash-received documents were altered or had forged signatures of employees who were to have signed them with Hansen.

When an investigator spoke with Hansen on Jan. 24, 2024, she said she didn’t know anything about a report of money missing from the hotel, that she is not the one who takes deposits to the bank and that she had not been interviewed by an officer on Dec. 19.

She later said she did sometimes go to the bank, but stopped taking deposits to the bank in July 2023. Hansen also later said she had spoken to an officer on Dec. 19, and told him about the money being stolen from the deposit bags.

She said she bought a new car after winning $19,000 at Treasure Island Casino in October 2023, and won a few jackpots that year.

Hansen told the investigator she believed someone who makes $60,000 a year is capable of putting $1.167 million into the slot machines.

Authorities gathered information from the Prairie Island Police Department regarding Hansen’s gaming activity at the casino. According to the records from Treasure Island, her yearly totals of “cash in” from 2014 to 2022 ranged from $93 to $162,000.

The amount for 2023 was $2.1 million — including nearly half a million in December 2023. Hansen had not won any money since May 5, 2023, the records showed.

Additional bank records reveal Hansen allegedly made deposits from EVEN Hotel into a PayPal account, then transferred money to her personal bank account.

The investigation showed deposits of more than $161,000 into one of her bank accounts in 2023, the complaint says, despite her annual salary of $60,000.

Law enforcement also found that her bank accounts had several charges from online gambling sites and Treasure Island Casino.