James Botbyl says he is a changed man who has owned up to a “life-defining mistake” that follows him as he tries to repair his sordid past as best he can and move on with a new life.
Botbyl (pronounced BAHT-bye-ul), the former Fairfield Glade Fire Department treasurer who admitted to embezzling more than $239,000 for a year beginning in late 2017, says he is sorry for the pain his theft caused others and would understand if people neither believe him nor forgive him.
“I’m not looking for everyone to forgive me,” he said in an interview July 9 at the small house he rents on the south side of Fairfield Glade. “Forgiveness is personal. I’m just trying to make it right.”
Botbyl over the past seven years has repaid all but less than $50,000 of the debt he owes the department. He continues to make restitution payments.
Now 59, he looked back on his illegal actions at the volunteer department before it had a board of directors with multiple layers of financial oversight to prevent such thefts from happening again.
He said he wrote checks to support two Crossville businesses he owned at the time – a stone company and a blasting company – including helping to pay the salaries of 56 employees.
He said the department was composed of firemen who “didn’t understand the books – like ‘What’s going on here?’ And, not that I hid anything, but if you don’t understand the books you don’t know where to look.”
“It was easy,” he said, then added, “until it wasn’t.”
He gets caught
The department’s bank eventually noticed the transactions with suspicion. Botbyl said his criminal activity “got out of control, and it obviously got to the point where it was unsustainable.”
Investigators closed in on him fairly easily because, he repeated, the checks weren’t hidden.
The Tennessee comptroller put the total amount of the thefts at $302,303, written in 64 fire department checks ranging from $1,000 to $8,600 each. The comptroller said Botbyl “periodically deposited personal funds totaling $62,743 in the fire department’s bank accounts in an apparent effort to repay some of the stolen money.”
That left a shortage of $239,560. A Cumberland County grand jury in April 2019 indicted Botbyl on a charge of theft in the disappearance of that amount from October 2017-September 2018. He pleaded guilty in Criminal Court in June 2019 and on that day paid $65,000 in restitution.
He received a suspended eight-year prison sentence provided he made payments of about $1,800 a month to the department through the court system until he fully repaid the remaining balance of $174,560. He has missed some payments over the years, mostly, he said, during the COVID-19 pandemic but otherwise has been slowly reducing his debt.
The current fire department treasurer, Kevin Mueller, reported to the Fairfield Glade Community Club Board of Directors in May that Botbyl had repaid all but $49,000 and that the department would continue to pursue complete repayment. Although its insurance carrier paid the department $50,000 after the theft, the department must repay the company that amount if it receives full restitution.
Mueller told the board, “We’re not going to take the foot off the gas pedal on that.”
Botbyl said his debt now stands at $43,800.
Botbyl described getting caught as a relief, like a “huge weight lifted off of my shoulders” because of the “brain power” it took to financially manage essentially three companies through his unlawful transactions – his two businesses and the fire department.
“It just kept getting deeper and deeper.”
“Bad choices,” he said, but adding he could have replaced the fire department’s money by refinancing his businesses. That is, until the theft charge was brought against him.
He said he turned himself in because “there was no point in dragging it out.”
Seeking more relief
Botbyl said he has hired an attorney in the hopes of working with the court or the insurance company on a new plan for him to pay off the remaining debt. He wants either the monthly payments reduced to as much as $600 a month, which would extend his restitution time, or to put up some equipment as collateral in the event he could not pay it off in cash.
He said he needs the relief from the $1,800 payments “so I can actually live.” He said he has no health insurance and needs it because of several medical issues, including a blood clotting disease, two pulmonary embolisms and congestive heart failure. Earlier this month, he spent two days in a hospital with pneumonia and the flu.
Adding to his financial difficulties, he said, is that he manages the family business Beautiful Homes, which builds decks and performs other home maintenance. He said the business has six employees who need to be paid.
He said he is “negative over-$100,000 in equity right now between what I owe the fire department and what I’m funding with my business on jobs that are out there. So I don’t have cash.”
Owing an apology
Botbyl said he has tried to build a good reputation through his work with Beautiful Homes. But he has had trials and tribulations there, too, including a bad review on social media platform Nextdoor last month from a customer who said he “made promises and took money but did not complete the job and what he did was terrible.”
Botbyl disagrees in that dispute. But he followed that posting with his own in which he said the review “made me realize I owe the community a public apology” for his embezzlement.
His note, addressed to Fairfield Glade residents, the fire department, his past and present employees and his family, read in part:
“I am truly sorry for taking the money and for the impact my actions had on you. I’ve taken full responsibility, pled guilty, and have been paying restitution.
“This was a life-defining mistake, and I’ve worked to learn from it, better myself, and provide much needed services in FFG.”
He posted that message for other reasons, too. He said another person kept sending private messages through Nextdoor to his customers about his past and “saying how bad I am,” and he read in the Glade Sun about the report from the current fire department treasurer to the community club board.
Although he said he always tried to keep a “low profile” on the internet, he felt it was time to put himself “out there.”
Actions, not words
Asked why the community should believe he is sincere after taking so long to apologize for his crime, Botbyl said his continued restitution payments since 2019 show it beyond his words.
“I’ve put my health second to paying them back.”
He said he tries to “go above and beyond for customers,” showing that he is trying to live a better life and help others. He said, as an example, his employees cleaned the roof and driveway for a woman who had just lost her husband. He charged her $150, which he said covered only the cost of the chemicals.
Above all, he said he can show his sincerity by completely paying off his debt to the fire department.
“I have no intentions of trying to get out of it.”
Botbyl said he never intended to hurt anyone through his transgressions in his former role as treasurer of the fire department. Yet, he admitted, “The only thing I’ve done is harm people.”
He also acknowledged that his apology was long overdue.
“I’ve never come out and said I’m sorry.”
Until now. Whether anyone believes he is remorseful and forgives him is, as he says, a personal choice.