Union County woman pleads guilty in $533K township theft scheme

Pamela Hackenburg admitted stealing $532,747.67 from Gregg Township, a loss built through nearly 3,700 fraudulent transactions that siphoned public money over more than five years and exposed major failures in local oversight.

Hackenburg, 56, a Union County resident and former Gregg Township secretary and treasurer, entered an open guilty plea July 14 in Centre County Court to theft, identity theft and access device fraud. A receiving-stolen-property charge was dropped, and the open plea left her sentence entirely to the judge.

Hackenburg began working for the township in January 2019, and the theft continued until township officials discovered the scheme in May 2024. She was suspended without pay at that point, and state police filed charges in November 2024 after the losses were traced through court and audit records.

The money was spent on gambling, Venmo transfers, personal purchases and cash tied to rent or event fees at the Old Gregg School Community and Recreation Center, where the municipal office is located. Township officials had previously said supervisors were not regularly reviewing credit card statements, and a township supervisor later said they had not seen the statements that would have revealed the abuse. In a small rural township where ordinary expenses run through a local municipal office, that breakdown left taxpayers exposed to a six-figure loss.

Gregg Township officials said they would seek full restitution. By September 2025, a judge ordered Hackenburg to pay $615,580.78 in restitution and sentenced her to two to four years in state prison, followed by two years of probation. The final order underscored how much more this case carried than a gambling habit or a single employee’s misconduct: it left residents with the cost of rebuilding trust in the controls meant to protect township dollars.