The Town of Ignacio's embezzlement losses are significantly more than originally thought, and the thefts were going on a lot longer as well, town trustees were told on Feb. 17.
The total loss as of that day was put at $70,677, according to Town Treasurer Diana Briar. The initially reported total was $46,484.
Town hall front desk employee Jackie Mejia was arrested at town hall on Jan. 21 by Ignacio Police, according to IPD's arrest affidavit filed with La Plata County Combined Courts on Jan. 22. The citation listed then was Class 4 felony theft/embezzlement.
Mejia is scheduled to have a court hearing at 9 a.m. on March 3.
Briar and Town Clerk Georgann Valdez said Mejia received utility and other payments. Each day's accounting was tallied at the end of the day, and Mejia was supposedly taking the day's receipts of cash, checks, and credit card payments to the night drop at Ignacio's Wells Fargo Bank.
Briar and Valdez have been going back through those since Mejia's arrest, including getting copies of the front and back of checks deposited. "There were some county checks just written for deposit only instead of being validated by the machine" and included in the end of day tally, Briar said. "I contacted the county. It looks like there was $20,722 missing" in addition to the amount reported earlier.
Those checks that didn't go through the daily tally apparently were deposited to make up for cash from the previous day's tally that wasn't deposited, Briar said. "She always deposited the right amount but not the right cash amount. She used checks to make it work. ... At the end of the day, it tells you how much cash, checks, credit cards. After it's closed out, your bank deposit matches. ... The level was right. Everything matched. She pulled out the cash and took checks to make it balance. Now we make sure the cash and checks match" from the daily tally to the deposit.
"She was manipulating the deposit slips," Valdez said.
Briar told trusteess, "Georgann did a separate sheet on the business licenses. She discovered that those that had receipts stapled to them were accounted for. The others, $1,282, was used to balance out deposits. We're short that amount on business licenses and $1,600 on contractor licenses."
Those bring the loss so far to $70,677, she said. The town is insured for losses up to $100,000. A forensic auditor from the insurer is also going through the town's records.
So how come none of the town hall staff noticed the problem last year?
Interim Town Manager Mark Garcia said, "The ladies have a system for opening and closing (the daily receipts). When someone is on vacaion, they don't have that. She (Mejia) got ahead of us on a couple deposits and the theft continued." Garcia started with the town last September. Police Chief Kirk Phillips was acting manager last summer after trustees fired the previous manager on April 22 last year.
Valdez and Briar cited staff turnover at the bank. Briar said, "When we talked to our (bank) rep, she said it's a red flag because of the lack of cash, but because of the turnover, it wasn't spotted."
Many town residents, especially seniors, pay their utility bills with cash, Briar and Valdez said.
Valdez lamented, "It's (the thefts) been happening for 10 months with three of us in the office... Our staff is short. There's nobody to count the cash with me sometimes. The way we stagger our hours, there aren't always two people there."
Now, Briar said, "I'm checking the (deposit) receipt every day against the cash report. If anything like this happens, it will be caught immediately. I think our biggest mistake was doing night drop deposits. They weren't. They were going home."
Valdez added, "We've been doing night drop deposits for over 15 years. The next morning, we would go get the receipt. It was being taken from right under our noses. The people you are working with, you have to trust them. This person fooled all of us. It didn't matter if it was day or night. It was happening under our noses."
Briar added, "She was doing it in the middle of the day. ... When she did the PO, she could have sat in her vehicle and pulled out all the county checks." Briar asked if the town has to have two people to get the mail.
Trustee Alison deKay said, "The one thing that bothers me, we need to check before November" when the thefts were thought to have started. "We need to look at everything and get it back."
Briar said she has gone back through all of 2015. Everything (cash, checks, credit cards) matched in January and February last year. Starting in March, they didn't.
Trustees discussed getting new audits going back to when Mejia started with the town in 2013. Briar said insurance wouldn't cover that cost, just the financial loss.
Garcia said of Briar and Valdez, "They are taking it very personal. This is an employee that they trusted."
DeKay added, "It's unfortunate that a lot of employee hard work is tainted by one person."
In the arrest affidavit filed on Jan. 22, IPD Sgt. Wes Crume wrote that Mejia came to him on Jan. 19 and said she had been taking money since early November because she has a gambling addiction. She initially said she had taken around $17,000 and had gambled it away, Crume wrote, but then she said the amount was probably higher. Crume listed it at $46,484.50.
