A call from a bank helped tip off the Scranton Single Tax Office that one of their employees dipped her hands into the taxpayers' cash register unnoticed, according to arrest papers.
Michelle Finnerty, a former Scranton Single Tax Office employee, allegedly took a $2,357.87 cash payment from an unidentified taxpayer for property taxes in February 2011, deposited only $506.92, and pocketed the rest - $1,850.95, according to arrest papers filed by chief of detectives for the Lackawanna County district attorney's office Joseph Jordan.
Ms. Finnerty, 35, of 2123 Ballau Ave., Scranton, was arraigned Monday on one misdemeanor count of theft by failure to make required disposition of funds received. She was released on $10,000 unsecured bail.
According to arrest papers, the tax office - which collects real estate and other taxes for Lackawanna County, Scranton School District and Scranton - received the call from a bank that one of its customers was listed as delinquent on their real estate tax, when in fact they had paid in full at the tax office.
Tax Collector Bill Court-right and his controller, Kim Shina, researched the bank's inquiry and found that a payment from the taxpayer was made on Feb. 14, 2011, for $2,357.87 at the Single Tax Office, though only $506.92 was deposited that same day at a Fidelity Bank branch, arrest papers stated.
Ms. Finnerty, a cashier and employee of the city tax collection agency from August 2008 until she was recently laid off, stole the money from the cash drawer and made false entries in the agency's computer, arrest papers stated.
Her motive: she took the money to pay bills, she told investigators, according to arrest papers.
Ms. Finnerty was laid off in May, one of about eight employees who were laid off, Mr. Courtright said Monday when reached by phone.
Her layoff was unrelated to the alleged theft of funds from the agency, he said.
Once his agency believed it found taxpayer money was missing, allegedly stolen by Ms. Finnerty, the finding was turned over to investigators with the district attorney's office.
He declined to comment in depth, deferring comment to the agency's solicitor, Mark Walsh.
"I don't know what I am at liberty to say and not to say," Mr. Courtright said. "I don't just want to say anything to jeopardize" the investigation.
According to arrest papers, investigators were informed in the first week of July.
Mr. Walsh disputed the notion that it took a long time to spot Ms. Finnerty's alleged theft.
"I don't think there is any lag time," he said. "It's not an easy thing to discover the way it was done."
He said Mr. Courtright has put in place controls and procedures to help them find and root out any misuse of funds "so we don't have problems in the future."
"The second it was discovered, the suspicion, it was turned into the district attorney's office," he said.
He is not aware of any other employees under criminal investigation for theft of taxpayer funds, he added.
A recently completed audit of the tax office's 2010 operations found several process flaws, though none were considered "material" weaknesses that could lead to the misstating of financial information. The most worrisome for city officials was that the tax office had yet to address the commingling of tax funds - keeping all taxes in one master account - that was partly to blame for the build up of $12.3 million in undistributed taxes in a tax office bank account. In 2008, then-Tax Collector Marilyn Vitali-Flynn discovered the undistributed taxes could not be accounted for from when Ken McDowell served as tax collector.
A subsequent independent review helped the tax office disburse much of the surplus money, but roughly $1.6 million in wage taxes from 1997 to 2004 were still missing.
Contact the writer: smcconnell@ timesshamrock.com @smcconnellTT on Twitter