For two decades, she worked for the state helping Florida's neediest. Colleagues considered her a mother figure. Bosses respected her. She got promotions.

No one noticed when Department of Children & Families supervisor Violet Jones started pilfering small chunks of money—no more than $900 at a time—from funds set aside for struggling families. And for three years, she kept tapping into public assistance funds, until she had swiped $1.54 million—enough to help feed 8,810 households for a month.

All of that stealing culminated Thursday in her receiving a 17-year prison sentence for acts described by a judge as unconscionable.

"It's really hard to get beyond how many people she impacted," said Broward Circuit Judge Eileen O'Connor. Jones' attorney argued that the money she stole was to feed a gambling addiction — a shame she kept hidden from even her closest family members. She gambled away almost all the money she took, he said.

"You can call her a thief, but I call her an addict," said Frederick Robbins, her attorney.

Jones, 42, who worked in the Plantation office of the DCF, pleaded guilty in September to stealing the $1.54 million knowing she faced a minimum of 10 years in prison. Before learning her fate, a crying Jones implored O'Connor for a second chance.

"I do not know if I can ever get through this," she said. "I cannot hold my head up most of the time."

DCF Southeast Regional Director Jack Moss told O'Connor that Jones stole from society's weakest to feed her own greed.

"Her actions were a determined criminal mind satisfying its own need," he said. "Ms. Jones is a serial embezzler and the public we serve must be protected from her."

Jones' accomplices — sisters Tanisha Shorter and Shanika Shorter — each were sentenced Thursday to 10 years in prison. Jones used her knowledge of DCF's inner workings to get around the agency's system of checks and balances. The two sisters, who didn't work for the agency, used government-issued debit cards to access some of the cash.

Jones' actions went unnoticed from January 2005 to December 2007, with her dipping into DCF funds 1,725 times, sometimes three or four times a day. Jones' arrest sparked statewide changes with DCF re-establishing its worker fraud task force.

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