The daily newspaper reported in its print edition this morning that Rebekah Jones signed a plea deal last week admitting guilt in a pending criminal case alleging that she accessed a state computer system without authorization.
On WCOA, Jones described the agreement as deferred prosecution agreement. The state will not take the case to trial if she pays the Florida Department of Law Enforcement $20,000, the State Attorney’s Office $100, perform 150 hours of community service at a minimum of 13 hours per week, a licensed mental health professional for a minimum of one hour per week and not get re-arrested for two years.
She said the allegation of the possession of Florida Department of Health records has been misled in the media.
“I possessed on my OneDrive Cloud storage, a roster of contacts and former coworkers, as described in the offense charge,” she said. “So that basically means when they raided my house and they were only supposed to be looking for evidence of a supposed text message, they went through all my cloud storage drives, found a contact roster that I had received by the state, via email, no fewer than three times, and said, you’re not supposed to have this anymore.”
As part of the agreement with the state, Jones said, “That is what I admitted that I possessed. I did not say I got it illegally. I did not say I had no right or reason to have it, just that it was in my possession.”