Woman Fails to Overturn Guilty Plea in $300K Embezzlement, Casino Gambling Case

A woman who formerly pled guilty to embezzling $300,000 from her employer to fund her gambling extravaganza at a California casino has lost a case in the Oregon Court of Appeals on November 4, 2026, seeking to overturn her guilty plea. Woman’s Appeal to Overturn Guilty Plea Fails Traci Lynn Marang was advised by her attorney to plead guilty to misuse of company funds at Precision Electric, an electrical contractor, abusing credit cards, bank accounts, and the payroll system. The misuse of funds continued between April 2018 and February 2019, with an independent audit from a third-party company determining that at least $300,000 was missing from the company’s accounts. Apart from gambling, Marang pleaded guilty to also using the money to cover concert tickets, hotel stays, buying Apple watches, jewelry, makeup, and clothing. Marang was previously sentenced to 42 months in prison in September 2021, and ordered to pay $310,150 in restitution after she pled guilty to identity theft and four counts of aggravated first-degree theft, along with falsifying business records. Marang’s renewed bid argued that some of the transactions were legitimate, noting that employees commonly used business cards for personal expenses. A better audit, Marang’s renewed plea argued, would have established just that – that some of the transactions were legitimate, and that she could have stood trial instead of pleading guilty from the outset. However, the court has rejected the appeal, arguing instead that the woman could have faced as much as 14 years in prison on the aggravated theft charges alone, citing a previous history of financial theft, and that her original attorney was indeed right to have recommended a plea deal instead.