A former part-time bookkeeper with the Temple Theatre was charged Tuesday with embezzling nearly $150,000 from the nonprofit performing arts venue, according to Sanford Police.

Tom Reeder, 45, of Courtside Lane in Sanford, was charged with one count of embezzlement more than $100,000 and placed in the Lee County Jail under a $200,000 secured bond. His first court appearance is set for Wednesday.

The Rant reported on Feb. 6 that theater employees made a report to the SPD in January stating that someone had fraudulently made “personal transactions without approval from (the) business.”

Reeder had been the theater’s bookkeeper for eight months in 2017 until abruptly quitting in December of 2017. He had worked there on a part-time basis while also apparently holding a full time job with Lillington door supplier Boon Edam.

Tuesday, sources told the Rant that the money went missing from the theater’s capital reserve account, likely over the late summer and early fall, but that they anticipated recovering between 90 and 100 percent of the funds.

“(The embezzlement) will not have any immediate negative impact on the Temple’s operations,” Chris deLambert, director of business development, said in a statement. “The Temple has already been able to recoup more than half of the missing funds, and will continue pursuing every possible avenue to obtain the rest.”

Producing Artistic Director Taphorn said the embezzlement wouldn’t even have been possible not long ago.

“The irony is that up until a couple years ago, we really had not been able to set any funds aside as a prudent reserve,” she said. “It was only because we were operating on such a tight budget and being fiscally responsible, that were finally able to build up some savings with hope of tackling some much-needed capital improvements to our buildings.”

Read the organization’s full statement here.

A mostly-private Facebook page remained published following Reeder’s arrest, showing his hometown as Lewiston, Utah, but not much else. Other publicly available information includes a LinkedIn profile that doesn’t contain any reference to his time at the Temple, but does show him having held jobs in California and in the Charlotte area.