Former deputy auditor’s assets frozen
The News Dispatch
Tuesday, September 17, 2013 12:00 am
La PORTE — Former deputy auditor Mary C. Ray, of La Porte, had her assets frozen following a preliminary injunction hearing held on Monday in the La Porte County Circuit Court.
Ray has been accused of embezzling an excess of $150,000 funds from the La Porte County government. This accusation is rooted from evidence of her time working in the auditor’s office during the entire year of 2012.
Her house and four vehicles have been frozen until a complete audit can be made by the state but she still has access to her bank accounts.
“It is the county’s desire to get every dollar from the action. And we want to provide an additional level of security for the county,” said La Porte County Attorney Shaw Friedman at the hearing. “That is why we would like to freeze a portion of her assets.”
According to previous reports, the preliminary audit found that certain checks paid to the county were not recorded or deposited but instead were held for weeks, and then substituted for unrelated cash payments to the county. Swapping the unrecorded checks for cash allowed the deposits to still balance with the amount of funds receipted.
Field Examiner John Panakowski of the State Board of Accounts took the stand on Monday and told the judge the audit for 2012 had incongruences within its account. He said the exhibits supplied by the plaintiff were created by the SBoA as spreadsheets for each auditing day.
Panakowski said he examined the records of La Porte County and looked at the receipts and deposits made from the auditor’s office.
An example of a day where Ray has been accused of taking funds was April 30, 2012. He said the State Board of Accounts found receipts of $9,863.29 collected that day. For that specific batch amount, only $7,509 was deposited. A batch is an amount of receipts that is collected and deposited as one transaction. The excess amount was receipted to Ray and taken out as cash.
Panakowski said he suspected Ray since each transaction with missing funds had a username code that matched Ray.
“Mary Ray was writing receipts when cash was missing,” said Panakowski.
Panakowski said there were 340 batches of receipts that were deposited in the year of review. Out of those, 182 batches were deposited by Ray and 149 of those batches had cash missing.
Ray’s attorney, Kurt Earnst, asked him if someone could have used Ray’s username besides Ray herself. Panakowski said it is possible for someone to take out the cash by using Ray’s username.
Detective L. Scott Boswell was called to the stand and was questioned about his role in the investigation. Boswell said he was assigned to find more information on a treasurer’s bag which was found at the local library in January, when he stumbled upon financial mishaps under Ray’s office.
According to previous reports, based on the eventual final audit report, the Attorney General’s Office could file a complaint to recover public funds at a later date, to seek civil collection of the final amount from Ray in order to reimburse the county treasury.
The final audit will review whether there was any surety bond coverage on Ray that the state could obtain to reimburse the county treasury for the shortage. Any amount not covered by bonds would be Ray’s personal responsibility to repay.
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