In the third incident of its sort since 2005, MSU is investigating another embezzlement - this time, in the College of Education.
MSU police are investigating an employee in the college who may have embezzled about $19,000 by making unauthorized personal charges with a department credit card. Police reported the employee made the charges on an MSU purchasing card, or a p-card, from October 2005 to June 2006 after discrepancies were noticed on monthly statements, MSU police Sgt. Florene McGlothian-Taylor said.
In June, Patricia Ann McGraw, an office supervisor in the Department of Theatre, was charged with embezzling more than $114,000 during a period of about six-years. She started working at MSU in 1976 and left in February because of the charges.
Before McGraw's case, a former MSU School of Journalism staff member was charged with embezzling from both the journalism school and from the Michigan Interscholastic Press Association, or MIPA. She was originally charged with two counts of embezzlement, but the MIPA charge was dropped after she pleaded guilty to the School of Journalism charge.
She received no jail time, although the embezzlement charge from the school is a felony. She only faced community service and probation, and had to repay the journalism school and MIPA. She retired from MSU in June 2005 and found another job, where she voluntarily told her employer about the case.
Her sentence was a slap on the wrist compared to the exorbitant amount of money she stole from the university.
Clearly, whatever system MSU has in place to notice and put an end to massive embezzlement scams isn't working.
The university controls spending on p-cards with credit limits, single-purchase limits of $2,500 and monthly statements, but there are approximately 3,000 cards used by full-time faculty and staff.
The university also has an independent hotline based in Atlanta with a 1-800 number for people to anonymously report financial fraud. Reports are given to a university committee, which decides how the university will handle the case.
But the people and institutions in charge of tracking funds need to do better. Student tuition is too valuable to be haplessly stolen every few years. Perhaps one committee isn't enough to monitor every fraud report. Perhaps the idea of blindly giving 3,000 credit cards to university employees is a mistake.
Whatever the flaw, embezzling from MSU has become a far too common occurrence with much too lenient penalties. Even if the woman suspected of the most recent money loss is not guilty, that money is gone. MSU needs to keep a constant eye on its funds, before thousands of dollars are lost again.
