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Chandler police arrested Laurie Basset last week and brought charges of Embezzlement on her for embezzling $20,000 from a Chandler charter school. She had worked in the finance department for the school and was writing checks to herself and her husband claiming they were Janitorial supplies. The school noticed after an annual audit found a 300% increase in janitorial supply ordering. My question is, why did it take a year to find the problem? Schools should be doing monthly or quarterly audits of the books, and there should always be someone to check over finances, a single person should never be solely accountable for finances in a school (or a business unless it is the owner and a solely owned business).
With schools struggling for funds this is always a tragedy when people have stolen funds that could have been used for the education and care of students, this is a particularly heinous crime and the person should be punished appropriately. Her husband is also wanted for conspiracy but has disappeared and is not to be found anywhere.
It is unlikely that Dobson Academy will be able to recover the money, hopefully some sort of insurance would cover this theft.
-Justin Germino