Page 18 of Not My Friend
If she noticed I was saying ‘we’ like we were in this together, she didn’t say anything.
“Let’s review the rest of the charges and make copies of everything, then I’m going to have to take it to my boss on Monday. He’s going to want to send in the forensics team to look at all your financials.”
I inhaled sharply. I knew she had to do it, but I also knew it was bad.
“What about Allison?” I asked. “Can I tell her?”
Kimberly nodded. “I think you should, as soon as possible. She’s going to want to put Erin on leave and immediately lock her out of all the accounts while we do an investigation. If she gets a whiff of an investigation, there’s no telling what damage she could do to you.”
“She’s been here forever,” I said sadly. “She’s a fixture here.”
“Sometimes when people have been in one place for a long time, it makes it easier for them to steal. People trust them after so many years of service, and if they think they haven’t been paid enough or they have a gambling problem or other reasons they need money, it’s easy to justify the theft.”
Kimberly gave me a serious look.
“The thing is, the thing Allison needs to think about too, is that if Erin’s doing this with the state grant, she’s likely being even more brazen with any foundation grants or donor funds where there’s even less scrutiny.”
“This is going to kill Allison,” I said. “She thinks of all of us as a family. I think… are you okay if I call her and ask her to come down so we can tell her together? I think she’s going to need to hear it from both of us and see the evidence herself to fully believe it.”
“Sure, but how are you going to get her down here?”
I shrugged. “I’ll tell her there’s an emergency here at the office. Because our CFO stealing money from us is an emergency.”
An hour later Allison came striding into the conference room, her expression concerned.
“Oh. Hi Kim, I didn’t realize you were here.”
My boss sent me a look I couldn’t interpret as she tried to assess the situation. I hadn’t told her much, just that I had an emergency at the office and needed to talk to her in person right away.
“You told me there wasn’t fire, flood or blood, but given the fact that the state is still in my building, I have a feeling this isn’t going to be good news.”
It was a running joke in the social work community that if something didn’t involve fire, flood, or blood, it wasn’t a true emergency, no matter how much the clients thought it was. I guess I was going to have to add embezzlement to that list.
“Have a seat Allison,” I suggested.
“What’s wrong? We didn’t meet our program outcomes or something?”
Kimberly and I exchanged a look, and she gave me a little nod, telling me to break the news.
“We’ve found some… inconsistencies in the bills we’re sending to the state.”
Allison huffed out a sigh of relief. “Oh, that’s it. What is it? We paid for some expenses that the state doesn’t like so we need to reimburse them?”
I shook my head and took a deep breath. “I’m afraid it’s more serious than that. It appears that the agency has been billing the state for client assistance that we didn’t provide.”
“I don’t understand.”
Allison looked at Kimberly, like maybe I wasn’t making sense.
“There is a pattern of charges to your contract for utilities or rent assistance which, according to the tenant files, Gina’s team did not request or authorize.”
“We rarely pay rent or utilities,” I reminded my boss. “In some cases, the client asked for help, and we referred them to another agency for funds and in many cases, there was no documented discussion of financial assistance with the client at all. But Erin still billed the state for them anyway.”
“There must be a mistake,” Allison said, looking a little ill.
“All of the charges were electronically transferred to the exact same bank account, regardless of who they were purportedly going to,” Kimberly explained. “And every single transaction was authorized by Erin Rose.”
“Let me see.”
