by Jo | July 31st, 2005
Damn, and she didn’t buy one pair of shoes? Are you sure this women IS a women??? Sick sick sick.
AP Wire | 07/30/2005 | Police: Woman spent $1.7 million in housing grants at casinos
MOBILE, Ala. - A former Chickasaw Housing Authority accountant indicted on federal charges of embezzling about $1.7 million from her agency apparently gambled most of that money away at nearby casinos, police said.
Therese Jones Brown was indicted Thursday in Mobile.
Chickasaw Police Sgt. Gerald Thornton said records from Mississippi casinos show she spent the stolen money on games of chance.
Brown worked for about 19 years as an in-house accountant for the housing authority. She was fired Feb. 16, after authorities learned of the missing cash.
Police said Brown over about 10 years took money from U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development grants intended to help the authority renovate its properties for low-income tenants.
July 31st, 2005 at 3:09 pm
Well, damn. $170k/year for 10 years. Not bad for government work. But 10 years to catch her? In-house accountant or not, there should be a record of annual audits. Each auditor responsible should be fired, but that ain’t likely to happen. This is an example of the government having waaaay too much money to spend. They didn’t notice it missing for 10 years! I know there are examples where billions of dollars are unaccounted for, but for some reason this hit home. Maybe because it’s easier to get my head around $1,700,000 than it is $17,000,000,000.
July 31st, 2005 at 5:50 pm
I agree, took em long enough.
August 1st, 2005 at 7:03 am
I agree with MadMonk — what took them so long. Might need to get Chuck to look into this, he seems to have the connections in Montgomery.