I have to say that the one crime that never ceases to amaze me is embezzlement.
Truly, you’re more apt to be hired somewhere if you murdered someone than if you have a history of embezzlement from the workplace. Murder could have been a one-shot event, a crime of passion, an accident… (We’re not talking first degree murder here, of course.) Unless you killed your former boss or fellow employees – in whatever degree – I think that most employers would rather take a chance on a murderer than a thief.
Don’t these folks with their hand in the till think they’re going to get caught?
Maybe most of them don’t. Maybe we only hear about the few and far between.
But there does seem to be an awful lot of them – like the construction firm secretary who stole money to pay for things like hiring Burt Bacharach to sing at her brother’s wedding. (This gal got a mention in a way-back Pink Slip.)
Maybe it’s the times. Maybe it’s the technology that’s getting better at catching those with a yen for the company’s yen.
The latest local story is about a former Saugus (Massachusetts) Public Library employee who’s been indicted by a federal grand jury, charged with ripping the library off to the tune of $800K:
…money she allegedly used to pay bills, to fund work on her home, and to splurge on jewelry, flowers, and hotel stays.
Linda Duffy was only on the staff, as an administrative assistant, for 7 years. That’s an awful lot of bill paying. I suppose the work on her house and her “splurge” items all added up.
Duffy allegedly set up a “decoy bank account”, in which she deposited donations, as well as library fines. She then moved the money along to her own account, conveniently in the same bank.
The majority of the money came from donations: $143K from a family estate, and $450K from the GE Foundation in matched donations from employees and retirees. (Saugus is the town next to Lynn, where GE – which now has a small presence – was once a mega-deal. Lots of ex-GE-ers on the North Shore of Boston, from whence Jack Welch also hails.)
The matched GE donations included non-donations that she faked up to get the match. (Clever girl, that Linda Duffy.)
Among the bogus donations she reported: $50,000 from people she personally knew and two $50,000 donations from her mother-in-law, the widow of a former GE employee, who is more than 100 years old.
And she thought she had mother-in-law problems before?
Sheesh!
Although I’m sure there are some circumstances under which embezzling from your employer may be morally okey-dokey, the only such scenario I can come up with would be ripping off I.G. Farben to save people from concentration camps during WWII.
So stealing from “the man” is very rarely a good thing to be doing.
But stealing from a library seems especially heinous.
Saugus is not poor, but it is by no means a swank community. $800K is a lot of books that don’t get put on the shelf, programs that don’t get run, employees that don’t get hired. Public libraries are one of the few institutions that can actually level the playing field. They’re free. They’re open to all. They can be a great and potent equalizer. Libraries should be supported, protected, defended, not ripped off.
For shame, Linda Duffy!
You weren’t stealing from GE, lady. You were stealing from every kid in Saugus. Every out-of-work resident who queued for the libary computer for their job search. Every old geezer who uses the library as a reason to get out of the house every day. Every high-schooler who didn’t get the afternoon job they wanted.
In general, I am slack-jawed when I hear stories about embezzlement.
I know it’s a slippery slope, that most embezzlers don’t set out to steal $800K, that their first “success” makes the subsequent grabs easier and easier, that the act – not to mention the extra “splurge” money – is no doubt addictive. But what are you thinking when you make that first transfer to the “me account”?
And from a library, no less.
Linda Duffy is 65.
I would suspect that, for embezzlement of this magnitude, she may well do time.
So when she gets out she may be too old to work.
But she sure wouldn’t be especially employable, anyway.
Sheesh!
What was she thinking
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You know what job I would have liked? Forensic accountant.
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