Delmar DustPan

Well I have held off posting the various local fraud and embezzling cases for a while but this one I have to post. Christine H. Truitt, who was the former finance director of Harrington Delaware until April 20th, was charged with embezzling $547,500. Now, Harrington has an annual budget of about $3 million and a population about the size of both sides of Delmar combined so it is similar to Delmar. As a retired accountant, I am insulted by the fact she, if found guilty, would have violate her fiduciary responsibilities and second, by the unimaginative way in which she allegedly stole the money. Writing checks to yourself and forging someone name on them is not a very smart way of stealing money, but it seems to work in over 70% of the cases we read about. Stealing over $500,000 over the period of a year when the budget is only $3 million also is not very bright.

Could this happen in Delmar? Yes it could. No business is safe from embezzling and Delmar is not an exception. Hopefully we have accounting cross checks in place that would prevent this or at least catch it before it reached a half million dollars. At one time there was a Town check verification procedure where the Town of Delmar bank statement when received, would remain unopened until a Mayor opened it and ran thru the cancelled checks verifying they looked correct. I don't know if this cross check is still in existence. When I worked at the Wicomico County Detention Center we had a small checking account there and one of the accounting cross checks I set up was to have a clerk who was not connected with accounting to open the bank statements and look for signatures that looked fake or checks made out to employees that person also looked at the endorsement on the back of the check to see if an employee had endorsed the check, before the bank statement was sent to accounting for reconcilation. This is a simple cross check that would expose the less imaginative ways of fraud.

In addition, way back in the 1980's, a list of bills to be paid for that month would be presented to the Joint Councils, in public session, for approval. It would frequently break into a discussion as to why we had incurred certain bills but at least everyone knew what was going to be paid, including the public. That has since been dropped, as when I talk to councilmembers they have no idea what is being paid by the Town.