Former SLO County officer who embezzled $170K got ‘relatively light’ sentence, DA says
A former San Luis Obispo County probation officer was sentenced on Tuesday to a far lighter punishment than she could have for embezzling nearly $170,000 from the department’s union over a year-and-a-half-long period while serving as its treasurer.
Despite being recommended to serve over eight years in prison, she was sentenced instead to less than a year in County Jail.
In February 2025, Fallyn Rollins, 32, was charged with nine felony counts of grand theft by embezzlement and a sentencing enhancement for a white-collar crime over $100,000. She pleaded no contest to the charges in March, accepting a felony conviction.
She paid back $169,875 to the probation department’s union on May 19 — $166,461 of which was embezzled funds with the rest being costs related to the embezzlement — handing a check to the union’s president, Robert Macias, during her last court appearance, according to court records.
“When she swore an oath, we thought she was one of us, and she’s not like us,” Macias said during the sentencing hearing on Tuesday. “She’s completely different. She was held to a higher standard.”
Rollins was convicted of stealing the money over 18 months by regularly writing herself multiple checks of up to $10,000 every month from February 2023 and August 2024, according to the Santa Barbara County probation pre-plea report obtained by The Tribune through a public records request.
She also admitted to falsifying her Probation Department time card to show she worked hours she did not work, the report said.
She used the money to pay off credit card debt and cover her living expenses, including thousands of dollars spent on groceries, gas and an $8,000 car payment on a new Tesla, according to testimony presented during a hearing for a mental health diversion. She also paid for trips to Miami and Las Vegas and made a few purchases at clothing stores, according to court records.
“There is not a person in my life who has not been negatively impacted on my actions,” Rollins said during Tuesday’s sentencing. “An apology will never be enough to remedy the damage that has been caused, but I hope through action and demonstration the people in my life will be able to see those changes in me.”
“To those I have hurt, and now remain, I am deeply sorry,” she said.
Given the unique circumstance that the theft was committed by a San Luis Obispo County Probation Department employee, the case was referred to the Santa Barbara County Probation Department for a sentence recommendation.
The Santa Barbara County probation report recommended Rollins serve the maximum sentence of eight years and four months in a state prison and pay an additional $332,923 — double what she embezzled.
However, on Tuesday, SLO County Superior Court Judge Rita Federman instead sentenced Rollins to 270 days in jail, to be served in either San Luis Obispo County or Santa Barbara County, followed by two years of probation. The decision on where she will serve time and probation is up to the Sheriff’s Office.
Federman waived the $332,000 recommended fee but ordered Rollins to pay an additional $4,200 in fees and fines for enhancement, restitution and conviction.
Federman said she found Rollins’ crimes “substantially less serious” than other similar circumstances, noting that she used the stolen funds primary for daily living expenses such as childcare, as well as for other purposes like a luxury vehicle.
“However, she did not create an elaborate scheme to hide the (theft),” Federman said. “She boldly wrote checks to herself in sizeable amounts without any justification.”
Federman also pointed out Rollins paid full restitution and that she has no criminal record. Rollins faces the maximum prison sentence if she violates probation, she said.
Finally, Federman lifted a protective gag order that was placed on the case in February 2025 after District Attorney Dan Dow made several comments about the case on Facebook.
The DA’s Office also advocated for a prison sentence consistent with Santa Barbara County’s probation report.
“Embezzlement from your fellow members of a nonprofit organization is a tremendous betrayal of trust, and even more so when you are a member of law enforcement agency,” Dow said in a news release Tuesday. “We are disappointed with this relatively light sentence, but we respect the judge’s independence and authority to do so. The fact that Ms. Rollins has already fully paid the restitution was clearly a factor that weighed in her favor.”
How was the embezzlement discovered?
In addition to recommending a prison sentence, the Santa Barbara County probation report revealed new details about Rollins’ embezzlement and how it was discovered.
It started when Rollins was placed on administrative leave from the SLO County Probation Department on Aug. 22, 2024, after lying on her timecard, the report said. She went to Las Vegas to stay with her parents.
The next day, then-president of the SLO County Probation Peace Officers’ Association, Noah Arnold, told Rollins he would need to take control of the union’s financial documents from her, referencing an earlier embezzlement case in Santa Barbara County, though he did not yet suspect Rollins of embezzling funds.
That morning, Rollins called her then-significant other — another Probation Department employee and the father of her child — from Las Vegas and “just lost it,” fully admitting to stealing what she estimated at the time to be $100,000, the report said. He told her he had to report the information.
Supervising Deputy Probation Officer Jason Hendrix saw Rollins’ partner — whose name was redacted from the report — talking on the phone in his car “seemingly upset,” the report said. Hendrix asked him if he wanted to go on a drive for privacy, which is when the man reported that Rollins’ had stolen from the union. Hendrix said the man was “crushed” by the news.
The two had started dating at the start of 2020 and moved into a rental property together that summer, which they later purchased in 2021. He thought he would marry Rollins, but she “refused to combine their finances or get a joint bank account every time he asked,” the report said.
The man told Hendrix that a couple of weeks prior, he’d found a union check for $9,900 made out to Rollins in her backpack, which she dismissed when he asked her about it and said was a reimbursement for paying the union’s taxes after she’d lost the union debit card, the report said.
Rollins had shown him a receipt from her bank account showing the transaction, and he hadn’t noticed any other “red flags” so he believed her. Their finances were separate, she also sent him mortgage payments, and she did not purchase expensive items, aside from a lot of Amazon and Target packages and the Tesla, which she told him she purchased with a $10,000 tax refund.
“During their relationship, they experienced financial strain, but he did not believe they were at a point that would have pushed her to steal money,” the report said.
The man told Hendrix he later felt “stupid” for believing her about the check and later told detectives he felt “weird” when he found it, uncomfortable with the idea of the union reimbursing anyone with such a large amount of money.
Rollins later admitted the check was fraudulent and the receipt was forged.
Arnold searched Rollins cubicle, finding a box of old checkbooks from their previous banking institution and Franchise Tax Board documents, and requested four years of account statements from the union’s bank.
The bank statements showed fraudulent activity via 23 unauthorized checks and $4,199 worth of debit card transactions beginning in February 2023 and continuing into August 2024. Some of the debit card transactions were for non-union expenses, such as Costco fuel and cash withdrawals.
Rollins Apple Wallet history showed 43 “high-value purchases” including event tickets and airline boarding passes, some of them related to a trip to Miami.
The memo line on some of the checks made payable to Rollins cited reimbursement for payments to the union’s law firm, which Arnold confirmed had not been personally paid by Rollins. He also discovered some unpaid union bills, such as to the IRS and Franchise Tax Board, and found the union was late on filing its taxes.
It was determined at the time that Rollins had embezzled $158,461, the report said.
On Feb. 1, 2023, before the embezzlement, the balance of the union’s bank account was $219,632. A year and a half later, the account balance had decreased to $64,767.
Rollins’ mother talked about getting a loan to reimburse what Rollins stole in an effort to prevent her daughter from going to prison, but Arnold shortly after froze the union’s accounts and reported the theft to the San Luis Obispo Police Department.
In a pretext call to Rollins after her partner reported her, he asked her how and why she embezzled. She responded the embezzlement began after they had moved in together and it was “not meant to include him,” the report said.
Rollins said it “started out of, like, I can’t afford to pay my bills this month,” the report said. All of the money she had stolen was spent, and she used it to purchase items for the house and their children.
“When she began stealing, she did not have a plan, but it got to the point where she could not undo it and the only way out was for her to be honest,” the report said.
Rollins resigned on Sept. 9, 2024.
She stayed with her parents in Las Vegas because her partner said he did not want her to return to their Santa Maria home, but she eventually did return.
When Rollins talked with her partner, he said he could “hear a sense of relief almost, like a change in her demeanor,” as she no longer had to keep it a secret, the report said.
She started seeing psychologist and was diagnosed with a mental health diagnosis, the details of which was redacted. The report traced Rollin’s mental health history back to a traumatic brain injury from childhood sports and detailed “excessive spending,” habits.
In July, Rollins was denied the mental health diversion for diagnosed bipolar II and possible bipolar I disorder. The diversion would have allowed her to expunge the embezzlement charges from her record, but Federman concluded there was no evidence that Rollins’ crimes were a result of the cyclical or manic episodes that result from the mental health disorders.
The probation report said she plans to continue living with her family and wants to pursue a career as a therapist, but she understands that “door might be closed.” She plans to pursue that avenue should she be able to expunge her record in the future, the report said.
Rollins must report to jail for her sentence by 8 p.m. on Aug. 8.
