The Steamship Authority now believes upwards of $140,000 was embezzled by a bookkeeper over some eight years, and the boat line is investigating further back in the woman’s 20-year employment history.

Armine Sabatini, 45, of Mashpee was arraigned on Monday in Falmouth district court and pleaded not guilty to felony charges of larceny.

Police said they had identified 194 fraudulent transactions dating back to 2001, totaling $83,000. A further 176 suspect transactions still were under investigation.

They said she used 19 different credit cards from eight different banks, in either her name or her husband’s.

Sabatini, known to her work colleagues as Estelle, has been an employee of the boat line since 1988 and a bookkeeper since 1995. She was in charge of processing credit card charges and issuing refunds for SSA customers.

But as well as issuing genuine refunds to SSA customers, Ms. Sabatini issued fraudulent refunds to herself and her husband, SSA general manager Wayne Lamson said on Wednesday.

“So far,” said Mr. Lamson on Wednesday, “we have been able to confirm $83,000.

“It’s a very time-consuming process, but I think once the police department issues subpoenas and we can get additional information, it will be easier. We’re hoping to know the full picture within the next two or three weeks.

“It goes back at least to 2001. Bob Davis [the SSA’s treasurer/comptroller] has done a good job in going back and pulling out the suspect transactions,” Mr. Lamson said.

“All the transactions he has suspected so far he’s been able to confirm. He’s been 100 per cent. We think once we get additional information that ties these credit card numbers to other accounts, the total will be over $140,000.”

Mr. Lamson stressed no SSA customers had lost any money as a result of the embezzlement, although in some cases their names had been used.

“We’re still trying to gather additional information to tie everything up,” he said.

At this stage, he said, no other SSA employees were under suspicion of involvement in the scheme.

The long-running fraud came to light on Sept. 23, when Mary Claffey, director of information technology at the SSA, noticed two almost identical refunds, each for $3,593.

The first was a valid one to a customer’s Mastercard at 3:13 p.m. Six minutes later, Sabatini had processed another refund for the same amount, to the same customer name but on a different credit card.

Subsequent investigation showed a total of almost $10,000 had been credited to the same Visa card since June, by way of 10 refunds. When SSA staff contacted the bank which had issued the card, Mr. Lamson said, it would not give the name of the cardholder, but confirmed Ms. Sabatini’s name when it was suggested.

“The more we looked into it and other transactions, we saw a pattern and began to put things together,” he said.

Before SSA management could seek an explanation from Ms. Sabatini the following day, she went home. But, said Mr. Lamson, “We called her to find out if she knew anything about this.”

She was rostered off the next day, too, but was confronted when she returned to work on Monday.

“First she met with three or four people and then we asked if she wanted to meet alone with Phil Parent, the personnel manager. She agreed.

“When he asked: ‘Is there anything you want to say?’ and she said, ‘Just write down the amount I owe you and I’ll write you a check.’ ”

Mr. Lamson suggested the offer to write a check was probably made on the presumption that the SSA was not aware of the scope of the theft.

“She may not have realized at the time we were smart enough to go back and look further than just the last transaction,” he said.

“She repeated that she was not admitting to anything and not denying anything. She had time over the weekend to think about it. She obviously had been instructed,” Mr. Lamson said.

On Tuesday, the SSA terminated her employment.

“We were totally shocked by all this,” Mr. Lamson said. “She’s a 20-year employee, started with us in 1988. She was a bookkeeper for at least the last eight or nine years.”

He said he had no idea what Ms. Sabatini had done with the money, but noted the thefts appeared to have begun about the time she returned from maternity leave in 2001.

“That’s when it seemed to begin,” he said. “But we’re also trying to obtain records going back further than that.”

Mr. Lamson explained why the boat line believed Ms. Sabatini has acted alone, saying that the fraudulent payments occurred only on days when she worked.

“When she was on vacation — nothing. And if someone else was doing it and making it look like Estelle, they would have needed her password. Those are changed every 30 days.”

The loophole in the SSA’s accounting procedures which permitted the embezzlement has now been closed, Mr. Lamson said.

“We have now split the job, so the person who’s initiating these [refund] transactions can’t also approve them.”

He indicated the fraud was well covered.

“Even if somebody was looking at a list, on the surface of it, it looks as if everything is in order. There’s a customer’s name, and then a credit card. In some cases it is the right credit card number to a legitimate person, who was getting a refund. Then sometime later, maybe a few days or a week later, that person’s name might be used again, but with a different number.

“The amounts seemed always to be amounts we would expect — a round-trip auto rate to the Vineyard or Nantucket, or a high-speed passenger ticket, that might have been refunded. Three hundred and thirty dollars here, $550 there, just a few transactions, when we’re processing in the numbers we are, are hard to notice.”

He said the SSA carried crime insurance, and had already contacted its insurer about the matter.

“The main thing is it doesn’t affect customers. It’s not like instead of refunding them, it was refunded to her,” Mr.Lamson said.