A city clerk's office employee allegedly pocketed six figures worth of cash for city stickers over a seven-year period.
The contractor was accused of embezzling more than $200,000 in 25% debt collection fees on non-delinquent accounts.
Inspector General Deborah Witzberg's final quarterly report for 2023 includes at least two incidents that confirm the long-held belief that no one cares about the stores.
“As is often the case, fraud goes hand in hand with mismanagement. …We need tighter controls. We need more frequent audits. We need stricter accountability metrics so it goes to the city instead of going in,” Wittsburg said of the city’s sticker theft, which allegedly lasted from May 2014 to November 2021.
“People were walking away with stickers. But the employee had collected six figures for himself. …When people pay in cash, sticker sales are reflected in the system. operated the payment system, but not all of the actual cash ended up in the city's coffers.”
City Clerk Anna Valencia said her office discovered the city's sticker fee skimming allegations “before COVID-19” and immediately reported them to the Office of Inspector General. “I can't believe it took this long” to track down the accused employee, Valencia said.
“What she scooped was a very small amount of money. … She did it in such a small amount that it was difficult to catch. We can only thank the team that was able to find it. We took action. “She's on the rejection list now, which is no surprise. And she should be criminally charged,'' Valencia told the Sun-Times.
“If I could find that, I put technology in place so that no one else could do the same thing.….This is because so much of the technology is so outdated that I have never used technology to innovate so much in the office.” And that's why we've done it. And we need to move from a paper-based system to a technology-based system. That's how we find these things. When it's paper-based, it's very easy to cheat. You know. , ghost payroll and all that stuff. So if you go further down the technology path, you can find things like this and make sure they don't happen again.”
As usual, the inspector general's quarterly report does not include the names of those accused of wrongdoing.
It simply includes a summary of administrative investigations that have been completed and any penalties that have been recommended and subsequently complied with or ignored.
A careful examination of the city's stickers “cross-referenced security video dates and times and matched them with employee sales records, revealing that there were no cash payments in those transactions.” A past audit of the accused employee, covering available sales records from May 2014 to November 2021, will then determine “the extent of the unpaid balance attributable to the accused employee.” was used for.
“The OIG determined that the shortfall was due to “The employee weighed six figures,” the summary reads.
“During the course of the investigation, the employee resigned and did not make a statement in the OIG's administrative investigation. The matter was referred to criminal prosecution.”
These unscrupulous debt collectors accessed the city's debt collection portal and used it to, in Wittsburg's words, “improperly assign debts to themselves” that were not delinquent. It is said that they were able to recover more than $10,000 worth of illegal fees. It was a water and sewer bill that was paid on time.
“The contractor then submitted an invoice to the city seeking a contractual 25% contingency fee to recover the debt, but since the account in question was regularly paid by the customer, no meaningful collection effort could be made. was not necessary. As a result of the contractor's actions, he received more than $200,000 in improper contingency fees from the city,” the summary states.
The contract was terminated and the debt collection company was prohibited from doing further business with the city. To prevent future plans, the Treasury has disabled access to all city systems by contractors. Access to the system is restricted to ensure the collection agency “does not repeat the conduct in question.”
“Again, this is illegal conduct combined with mismanagement,” Wittsburg said.
“City resources are precious. We cannot misdirect them for personal gain. We are heartened by the fact that the city took immediate action to avoid further action with that entity.”
