Published: Wednesday, December 24, 2008 Updated: Wednesday, December 24, 2008 6:05 AM EST
Scranton police have charged the Scranton Sewer Authoritys assistant chief cashier with stealing more than $6,600 over seven months from customer payments.
Tammy Lesh, 44, of Rear 811 S. Irving Ave., Scranton, was set to attend a hearing Tuesday before Magisterial District Judge Alyce Hailstone Farrell before it was rescheduled to Jan. 27 for unspecified reasons.
Police charged Ms. Lesh with one count each of theft by unlawful taking, theft by failure to make required disposition of funds and receiving stolen property, according to the Dec. 17 complaint.
Eugene Barrett, the authoritys executive director, called the charges part of an ongoing investigation and declined to say whether Ms. Lesh has been suspended.
Mr. Barrett also declined to divulge when the alleged theft was discovered.
But he said an estimated 40 customer accounts of roughly 29,000 residential and nearly 2,000 industrial accounts were affected. Most customers pay by mail, and the authority has fixed any affected accounts, Mr. Barrett added.
The police complaint, however, outlined the allegations against Ms. Lesh, including that several customers called the authority and said their accounts were not credited with payments.
Sewer authority officials then discovered missing cash transactions, paid between January and July, totaling $6,648, according to the complaint.
An audit subsequently revealed Ms. Lesh initialed many receipts linked to the payments, and a surveillance camera taped her placing cash from an office drawer into her purse, according to the complaint.
We have made some additional security changes in the manner in which these transactions occur for customers that come in and decide to pay their bill at the front desk, Mr. Barrett said.
Efforts to reach Ms. Lesh were unsuccessful.
Ms. Lesh has worked for the authority for a year, according to Mr. Barrett. She previously worked for the Scranton Parking Authority, but further details of her work history werent readily available Tuesday.
The sewer authority is an autonomous municipal agency that collects waste for Scranton and Dunmore. Scrantons mayor appoints five board members to oversee it.
I guess the nepotism policy was just for the school district.
Now Shadow ... the woman who the article speaks of is the ex wife of a relative of Mr. Lesh ... given that it is an ex wife of his relative ... who by the way kept the Lesh name ... I do not think that this qualifies her as being a relative of Mr. Lesh ... and seeing that she works for theSSA (Scranton Sewer Authority) it certainly does not qualify as being Nepotism for Mr. Lesh being that his board seat is a SSD (Scranton School District) seat... even if she were his relative ... it could not be considered nepotisim!
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