Deemed ‘flight risk,’ former Macon medical administrator’s bond revoked in fraud case

Bond was revoked Monday for a former Macon medical office worker who had been out on bond at the time of her arrest earlier this month on credit card fraud charges and had moved to Florida with her kids and obtained a driver’s license there.

Bibb County prosecutors expressed concern at a Monday hearing that Melissa Dyan Zediker, 44, also is trying to sell the Jones County house she put up as collateral for her bond.

Zediker has been arrested three times in recent months on allegations that she embezzled more than $200,000 from Macon doctors’ offices where she had worked.

She was first arrested on fiduciary theft charges July 17 on allegations she stole $99,063 from OrthoGeorgia.

Zediker is accused of illegally depositing payroll funds earmarked with her mother’s name into a bank account.

About two weeks later, on July 29, Zediker was charged with additional counts of fiduciary theft on allegations she stole nearly $70,000 from Urology Specialists of Georgia, a medical practice in Macon and Warner Robins where she worked as an administrator, earning a $130,000 salary.

Zediker, who was out on bond after those charges, turned herself in to the county jail Sept. 9 after warrants were issued in a third theft case.

Authorities allege that she committed 200 counts of credit card fraud, stealing an estimated $80,000 using an OrthoGeorgia credit card.

She has since been held without a bond on the third case.

On Monday, her attorney argued that a bond should be set.

Lawyer Craig Gillen said Zediker’s going to Florida was not illegal, that she was looking for work there, living with in-laws, and that if her house had sold, she would have changed the collateral for her bond to another piece of property.

Gillen said that when Zediker learned she was wanted for a third time, she soon traveled back to Georgia and turned herself in.

“It’s very, very rare when somebody is aware of an arrest warrant and they don’t flee from it, they flee to it,” Gillen said.

He said she drove back to Macon knowing she would be held without bond.

“Who would do that if they were a flight risk?” Gillen asked Superior Court Judge Howard Simms.

Prosecutor Myra Tisdale noted that before Zediker’s most recent arrest, she had bought airline tickets to travel to Las Vegas. When authorities learned of her planned trip, lookouts were posted.

Gillen said his client was going to Vegas on vacation.

Zediker, though, apparently never went to Nevada and went to Florida instead, to the Panama City area, authorities have said.

Gillen used Monday’s hearing to question the case against Zediker.

“We’ve heard a lot about what the state thinks their evidence is gonna show,” he said.

“It’s easy to stand up in court and say, ‘Oh, we have 200 counts of this complicated fraud.’ It’s just not the case.”

For example, Gillen said Zediker wrote the bank that issued the OrthoGeorgia credit card and requested that the account be changed to a personal one in her name. He said she made payments on the account.

In the end, Simms revoked Zediker’s bond, saying, “If you look at this it sounds like flight. Somebody’s changing their residence, their driver’s license, moving their children to outside the jurisdiction and at one point they’re planning to go to another state. ... It makes me entirely uncomfortable.”

Information from Telegraph archives was used in this report. To contact writer Amy Leigh Womack, call 744-4398 and find her on Twitter@joekovacjr.

This story was originally published September 28, 2015 at 10:00 PM with the headline "Deemed ‘flight risk,’ former Macon medical administrator’s bond revoked in fraud case ."