COURT OF APPEALS OF VIRGINIA 

Present: Judges Elder, Bray and Senior Judge Baker 

Argued at Richmond, Virginia 

PAULA HARDY PURIFOY 

 MEMORANDUM OPINION* BY 

v. Record No. 0374-98-2 JUDGE JOSEPH E. BAKER 

 APRIL 27, 1999 

COMMONWEALTH OF VIRGINIA 

FROM THE CIRCUIT COURT OF LUNENBURG COUNTY 

Charles L. McCormick, III, Judge 

Buddy A. Ward, Public Defender (Office of the 

Public Defender, on brief), for appellant. 

H. Elizabeth Shaffer, Assistant Attorney 

General (Mark L. Earley, Attorney General, on 

brief), for appellee. 

 

 *Pursuant to Code § 17.1-413, recodifying Code § 17-116.010, 

this opinion is not designated for publication.

 Paula Hardy Purifoy (appellant) appeals from her bench trial 

conviction by the Circuit Court of Lunenburg County (trial court) 

for a single count of embezzlement, in violation of Code 

§ 18.2-111, pursuant to an indictment which charged that she 

"feloniously, wrongfully and fraudulently embezzled money having a 

value of $200 or more which she received for another, namely ABC 

Distributing, Inc.," and which was entrusted to her by her 

co-workers. Appellant contends that the trial court erroneously 

admitted into evidence a bill for payment for merchandise (the ABC 

bill) sent by ABC to Victoria Elementary School; that the evidence 
did not prove that appellant embezzled money entrusted to her by 

her co-workers to be used to pay the ABC bill; and that the 

evidence failed to prove appellant embezzled monies of a value in 

excess of $200. 

 As the parties are fully conversant with the facts contained 

in the record before this Court and because this memorandum 

opinion carries no precedential value, no recitation of the facts 

is necessary. 

 The trial court did not abuse its discretion in admitting 

the ABC bill into evidence at trial. See, e.g., Blain v. 

Commonwealth, 7 Va. App. 10, 16, 371 S.E.2d 838, 842 (1988). 

 First, the circumstantial evidence, viewed in the light 

most favorable to the Commonwealth, see Martin v. Commonwealth, 

4 Va. App. 438, 443, 358 S.E.2d 415, 418 (1987), satisfactorily 

established the authenticity of the bill under the reply 

doctrine. See Kitze v. Commonwealth, 15 Va. App. 254, 263, 422 

S.E.2d 601, 607 (1992), rev'd on other grounds, 246 Va. 283, 435 

S.E.2d 583 (1993); Jewell v. Commonwealth, 8 Va. App. 353, 357, 

382 S.E.2d 259, 262 (1989) (holding that "circumstantial 

evidence showing both the defendant's return address and the 

responsiveness of the defendant's letter to contents of the 

girl's letter sufficiently established that the defendant sent 

the letter to the girl"). The bill was properly admitted under 

the reply doctrine because the bill showed it came from ABC 

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Distributing, and the circumstantial evidence proved multiple 

exchanges between ABC and the school. 

 The evidence established the procedures that were followed 

to place and pay for ABC orders, and the school's 

secretary/bookkeeper testified that she passed all ABC 

correspondence on to appellant during the time appellant was 

coordinating ABC orders and then to Liles, to whom appellant 

turned over her ordering duties. Liles received the ABC bill in 

question pursuant to this ongoing procedure. When Liles 

presented it to appellant, appellant did not challenge the 

authenticity of the bill and asserted only that she did not owe 

the money. Therefore, the ABC bill was sufficiently 

authenticated to permit its admission. See Duncan v. 

Commonwealth, 2 Va. App. 717, 727, 347 S.E.2d 539, 545 (1986) 

(noting that once "prima facie showing [of authenticity] is 

made, the writing or statement comes in, and the ultimate 

question of authenticity is left to the [fact finder]"). 

 Second, the bill was admissible under the adoptive 

admission exception to the hearsay rule. See, e.g., Knick v. 

Commonwealth, 15 Va. App. 103, 106-07, 421 S.E.2d 479, 481 

(1992). The key to determining the applicability of this 

exception hinges on whether "'the statement itself . . . would, 

if untrue, call for a denial under the circumstances'" and 

"'whether a reasonable person would have denied under the 

circumstances . . . .'" Id. at 107, 421 S.E.2d at 481 

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(quoting E. Cleary, McCormick on Evidence § 270, at 800-01 (3d 

ed. 1984)). Here, appellant actually gave the bill to Chief 

Dayton and admitted that part of the balance owed resulted from 

her misappropriating $330 given to her by her co-workers for 

merchandise purchased from ABC. Appellant's affirmative 

representations and her failure to deny the implied statements 

in the bill indicated that she acquiesced in the bill's 

representation that money was due on the ABC account. 

Therefore, the bill constituted an adoptive admission, and the 

trial court did not abuse its discretion in admitting the bill 

into evidence. 

 The evidence, viewed in the light most favorable to the 

Commonwealth, also establishes that appellant embezzled money 

belonging to ABC Distributing. Appellant was indicted for 

embezzling money "which she received for another, namely ABC 

Distributing, Inc., on behalf of [school] employees . . . which 

monetary funds were entrusted or delivered to her by the 

aforesaid victims." Code § 18.2−111 proscribes, inter alia, the 

wrongful or fraudulent embezzlement of money "which [s]he shall 

have received for another . . . or which shall have been 

entrusted or delivered to [her] by another." (Emphasis added). 

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 Here, the evidence proved that appellant embezzled money 

she "received for another," ABC Distributing. The testimony 

established that appellant's co-workers ordered and received 

their merchandise before giving money to appellant. Only after 
the merchandise had been received would appellant collect the 

money and send it to ABC Distributing. Therefore, in keeping 

with the indictment, the evidence proved that appellant 

embezzled the money she had received for another, ABC 

Distributing, which had already delivered merchandise. The 

plain meaning of the "received for another" portion of the 

statute requires no formal entrustment or employment 

relationship. Further, the language in the indictment regarding 

"monetary funds [which] were entrusted or delivered to 

[appellant]" by school employees merely describes which funds 

appellant "received for another." That the delivery of money to 

appellant by her co-workers may also, under certain 

circumstances, have proved that she embezzled the money from 

them does not prevent the ruling that she embezzled the money 

from the corporation under the facts of this case. 

 Finally, the evidence proves that appellant embezzled a sum 

in excess of $200 when she converted the $330 she had collected 

for ABC Distributing to her own use. That she originally 

obtained smaller sums of money from her co-workers is not 

dispositive because the evidence establishes that she aggregated 

the money into the larger sum of $330 and embezzled the entire 

sum from ABC Distributing at one time. Cf. Jha v. Commonwealth, 

18 Va. App. 349, 354-55, 444 S.E.2d 258, 261 (1994) (noting that 

even a series of larcenous acts may be aggregated to determine 

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value where "the several acts are done pursuant to a single 

impulse" (citation omitted)). 

 Accordingly, the judgment of the trial court is affirmed. 

 Affirmed.

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