Santa Fe County will get about $25,000 in restitution from its former sheriff who has admitted to selling county property on eBay for most of the nearly eight years he was in office.

The restitution ordered Thursday by state District Judge Stephen Pfeffer is roughly $112,000 less than was sought by the state. It was also decided that Solano will not have to pay toward the cost of a $64,200 audit conducted because of his November confession to selling items such as bulletproof vests, cellphones and office supplies online.

"I absolutely respect the court's decision," said Matthew Chandler, the Clovis-based district attorney who has handled the case. "But this is not a figure that makes Santa Fe County whole as Mr. Solano has been saying he wanted to do as a result of his fraud. This is not paying the county back what he cost them by his wrongdoing."

Solano, who says he is now working four jobs to try to make ends meet, pleaded guilty July 20 to five felony fraud counts and told reporters, "I will continue to work to make right for what I have done wrong."

It is a message he and his attorneys have reiterated since the scandal broke the day before Thanksgiving 2010.

"This is what we've been saying all along — that he was willing to pay fair restitution for what he did and we feel this decision is that," said defense attorney Brooke Gamble.

Thursday's ruling did not specifically state the dollar figure Solano will pay, but defense attorneys and Chandler agree it will be within a few hundred dollars of $25,000 after some final calculations.

Chandler said Thursday that he plans to ask Pfeffer for the maximum eight years in prison for Solano at a yet-to-be-scheduled sentencing hearing expected in the next 30 days.

Solano resigned in November with a letter to county commissioners that also served as a confession of sorts. He said that for a couple of years, he had been selling some used sheriff's office items, mostly expired bulletproof vests, to families of people working in the Middle East, so he could get money to help pay off his mortgage.

Thursday's restitution hearing featured mostly monotonous testimony about what the "fair market value" of hundreds of embezzled items should be.

But after 5 p.m. Thursday, when Solano himself took the stand, fireworks went off as he and Chandler had a heated cross examination covering allegations that the former sheriff is a habitual gambler and questioning why he spent about $20,000 from his retirement on personal bills and expenses since he left office rather than pay it toward restitution.

"I actually gamble very little and you've overblown that every chance you get," Solano told Chandler.

Solano's PayPal account, the same account eBay customers would pay into in exchange for the stolen items from the county, showed numerous ATM withdrawals at casinos in Nevada and New Mexico over the past few years.

The former sheriff said ATM withdrawals from casinos in Las Vegas and Reno, Nev., were all at venues hosting law enforcement training conferences and that area casino withdrawals such as those from Buffalo Thunder, Sandia and Santa Ana were either for gasoline purchases or because of various work-related events, including the Santa Fe County annual Christmas party.

Solano said he hasn't gambled in 2011 — online or otherwise — and played in one $50 poker game at a friend's house in December, the last time he remembers playing poker.

Solano said he spent the money from his retirement fund paying bills for his daughter's legal expenses for recent criminal charges, to prevent his south Santa Fe home from being foreclosed on and to get his family in a position to survive financially should he have to serve time in jail.

He said he and his wife, who was present in court, have a monthly income of $3,994 and monthly expenses of $3,570.

He works four part time jobs — as a woodworker, a handy an, a computer graphic designer and as a part-time worker at a storage company.

The home he and his wife own has an estimated value of $190,000, but the Solanos owe $196,000 on the mortgages. They also have a 2008 Ford Mustang valued at $17,000 (they owe $16,000 on it), a 1991 GMC pickup valued at $2,000 (paid off) and a piece of "vacant property in Colorado" valued at $10,000 (they owe $4,000). Solano said he found the Colorado property on eBay.

While both sides agreed on the restitution cost of hundreds of the new items Solano sold on eBay, the "fair market value" of several dozen used bulletproof vests was still in question, as was whether he should pay for the cost of a forensic audit the county paid $64,200 for to an independent accounting firm based in Albuquerque.

Criminal defendants can be asked to reimburse the state for costs incurred in an investigation, but the defense argued that not only was the audit not necessary for the criminal investigation, it wasn't something that was asked to be paid for by defendants in several other recent county embezzlement cases, including the still pending Advantage Asphalt case.

"It was something that sure seems to have been reserved for Greg Solano," Tom Clark said, who argued during testimony that the audit didn't seem necessary since a very detailed in-house audit of purchases was already completed by a county accounting manager, Helen Perraglio.

But Chandler said that Office of the State Auditor Chief of Staff Evan Blackstone summed up the audit best when he testified, "But for Greg Solano's actions, the audit would not have occurred."

Pfeffer actually agreed that Solano should foot the bill for part of the audit, but not all of it, because it delved into far more than just criminal matters related to the former sheriff. Without testimony from any state witness identifying what percentage of the audit could directly be attributed to the Solano case, Pfeffer said it would be "improper" for the court to speculate as to how much should be Solano's responsibility.

"I'm in no position to award any portion of the audit," Pfeffer said, emphasizing that even awarding $1 of the cost would be speculation.

Chandler said there was no way for the audit firm to break down how much exactly was attributed to the Solano criminal matters because their entire audit of the sheriff's office was the result of finding out what went wrong on Solano's watch.

"I believe it would have been negligent not to conduct an audit after the shambles Mr. Solano left that place in," Chandler said.

The other major bone of contention throughout the day was the fair market value, which is required to be established by law in restitution cases, of all the used bulletproof vests sold by Solano.

Pfeffer agreed with a defense motion that Solano repay what he made on eBay for the used vests, while Chandler and New Mexico State Police Agent Jesse Williams, the lead investigator on the case, said it would be improper to say eBay establishes the market value of an item.

"When the defendant arbitrarily determines the price of an item on eBay, that does not determine fair market value," Chandler argued.

Pfeffer didn't disagree, but again told Chandler he didn't feel the state presented any evidence as to what a better figure would be — and so he sided with the defense.

"The only proof I have ... is what happened on eBay," the judge said.

Chandler initially argued that Solano should pay the purchase price of the vests because that is what the county will have to now pay to replace all the missing vests, even the used ones. State law, however, makes it clear that is not the standard at which restitution is based.

Earlier this month, Chandler filed a motion asking for $137,564, which he said equals the cost of the $64,200 audit and $73,364 the county paid for the items Solano embezzled.

Gamble's response to that motion argued that Solano should pay $22,552 in restitution.

Solano says he has $10,000 saved that he could pay at the time of his sentencing, which is expected within a month.

Contact Geoff Grammer at 986-3076 or ggrammer@sfnewmexican.com. Read his blog at SantaFeCrime.com.