After Andrea Barendt was put in charge of her grandmother's checkbook, she bought herself a pickup, did some gambling and spent at least $10,000 on cocaine and methamphetamine, court filings say. Authorities estimated she stole about $178,000 in all.

On Tuesday, the North Dakota Supreme Court upheld Barendt's felony conviction for misusing the money. It had earned her a 10-year prison sentence, with five years suspended, after her trial in Devils Lake in November 2006.

Barendt had argued there was not enough evidence to prove her withdrawals from the bank accounts of her grandmother, Ada Barendt, were not authorized, or that she knew they involved a risk of loss.

In April 2002, Ada Barendt gave Andrea Barendt - who was her only grandchild - a durable power of attorney. It allowed Andrea Barendt to write checks on her grandmother's bank accounts and sell or transfer her property. However, transactions had to be for Ada Barendt's benefit.

Ada Barendt moved into the Good Samaritan Center, a Devils Lake nursing home, almost two years later, court documents say.

While Andrea Barendt, who was living in Mattoon, Ill., was regularly withdrawing money from her grandmother's accounts, Ada Barendt's bills were going unpaid, court filings say. They included $79,000 owed to the Good Samaritan Center and $4,000 due to the Devils Lake pharmacy that supplied her medicine.

The Supreme Court's unanimous opinion, written by Justice Carol Ronning Kapsner, said Andrea Barendt testified at her own trial that she used some of the money to gamble, and that she withdrew $50,000 to finance her own store to sell items on eBay, the Internet auction site.

Northeast District Judge Donovan Foughty, who decided Barendt's case, could "reasonably infer … (Andrea Barendt) knew these acts were not intended to benefit Ada Barendt," Kapsner wrote. "There was sufficient evidence to infer Andrea Barendt knew of risk of loss or detriment to Ada Barendt's property at the times she withdrew and spent Ada Barendt's funds."

Andrea Barendt's thefts were discovered when Good Samaritan contacted the Ramsey County public administrator. Ada Barendt was placed under temporary guardianship and conservatorship in July 2005.

The public administrator, after examining Ada Barendt's bank records, called Devils Lake police to request an investigation of Andrea Barendt's suspected misuse of money, the Supreme Court's opinion says.

Andrea Barendt had made more than $30,000 in withdrawals from automatic cash machines alone in a two-year period, one investigator said. She spent $20,000 on a pickup, then later sold it to a friend for $100 in a bid to prevent authorities from getting possession of it, an investigator said.