A former Chugiak High School clerk, who allegedly stole nearly $75,000 in student fees over several years, was arrested in Wasilla on Thursday, according to Anchorage police.
Brenda E. Burge, 54, was fired in March after the school and the Anchorage School District's accounting office discovered a pattern of missing student-paid funds, police said. It took months of matching receipts to deposit records to determine the total amount of missing money -- $74,897.60 -- said police spokesman Lt. Dave Parker.
"It was a long and laborious process," Parker said. "They got the money missing down to the penny."
Burge, a district employee since 1982, worked as a financial data control clerk at Chugiak High when the thefts occurred, according to district spokeswoman Heather Sawyer. The stolen money included student activity fees, fines for lost books and "anything that parents might show up to pay for their students," Sawyer said.
According to a criminal complaint, Burge was responsible for logging and delivering the money to the school district's central office. Three copies of the receipts were supposed to be generated from the fee payments: one for the school, one for the student or parent, and one for the district, the charges say.
Instead, Burge allegedly pocketed some cash from the deposits and only turned in receipts for the smaller amounts that she then gave to the district, the court papers say.
The district didn't catch on, because they were getting receipts for the amounts deposited to them, Sawyer said. "There was no way for the central accounting office to know that anything was missing, because the balances matched," she said.
4 EMPLOYEES INVESTIGATED
Another Chugiak High employee, Gayle White, was charged with theft and fired in April, the school district said. Employees at two other Anchorage schools were fired after similar allegations about the same time -- including one who allegedly stole elementary students' lunch money -- but those cases are unrelated to Burge's, Sawyer said.
Detective Anthony Pate said evidence showed White and Burge had not schemed together.
"They just happened to be discovered at the same time," Pate said.
Investigations of the two other school district employees fired in April continue, Pate said. They have not yet been charged, and their names are not being released, he said.
In the wake of the reported thefts, the district has honored the thousands of dollars in stolen payments made by students and parents, Sawyer said.
Sawyer said the district also has instituted new cash-handling procedures, with more checks and balances, to prevent employees from stealing cash in the future.
"We're doing everything we can to prevent something like this from happening again," Sawyer said.
That included re-training principals and vice principals on proper cash-handling procedures, and asking them to train the rest of their staff, said school district spokeswoman Heidi Embley. Anyone whose job specifically requires handling payments was required to take specialized training, she said. There are now four numbered copies of receipts from any student or parent payments, and two staff members must sign off on all cash payments, Embley said.
'A LITTLE HERE, A LITTLE THERE'
The suspicions at Chugiak High began when a student asked for a refund in February, according to the charging document.
In February, a secretary at Chugiak told the principal about what she suspected was missing money. A student had come in with a receipt for an $85 fee and was seeking a refund, the secretary said. But the school district's accounting office didn't have their copy of the receipt, nor did they have the money, the court papers say.
The school district's accountants later told the principal that Chugiak High never deposited much cash, a statement the principal found odd, the charges say. They would later discover tens of thousands of dollars had vanished.
"It is a lot of money, but keep in mind, it wasn't massive sums being taken at any one, individual time," Sawyer said. "It was a little here and a little there."
As the school continued to look into the matter, they found several more receipts for which the district accounting office had no records and no deposits. That's when the principal called police.
'IT ADDS UP'
"It's typical in these kind of cases where something small alerts somebody to take a closer look at it," Pate said. "People start to look at it, they uncover something and they look further and discover a little bit more and a little bit more until something like this unravels."
Investigators and school officials discovered dozens more deposits were not accounted for, according to the charging document.
At one point, the principal watched as fees totaling $460 were handed to Burge to deposit with the school district. Burge gave the bank bag to the district accountants, but the school district reported only $30 inside, accompanied by a receipt for $30, the charging document says.
As deposits continued to go missing, Pate obtained a search warrant for Burge and her vehicle and contacted her at the school. They found cash on Burge that had been photocopied earlier and dropped into a deposit intended for the school district, according to the charges.
Burge said the first time she took some of the cash to pay for gas to get to work, the charges say. She'd injured herself in 2006 while on the job, she said, and was stuck with $8,000 or $9,000 in medical bills. Burge told the detective she had been in danger of losing her house, the charging document says.
When Pate asked Burge how much money she thought she'd taken, Burge said it was never more than $120 at a time and guessed between $7,000 and $8,000 total. The detective told her it was closer to $15,000 or $20,000 per school year.
"It does add up then, I guess," Burge said, according to the charging document.
Burge told Pate she put the receipts in an envelope that she kept at home, with the intent of paying back the money. But Burge said the receipts burned up in a house fire, the court papers say.
It wasn't until Nov. 9 that Pate received the results of a lengthy school district audit. It showed the overall difference between the receipts recorded at Chugiak High and the amounts the district received each year, money for which Burge was responsible.
During the 2007-2008 school year, $13,607.25 went missing, followed by $22,567.57 the next year and $19,443.07 the year after. Another $19,279.71 went missing during the 2010-2011 school year, according to the charging document.
Police obtained an arrest warrant for Burge for theft, fraud and falsifying business records. After several visits to Burge's Wasilla home without making contact with her, troopers arrested Burge on Thursday, said Parker, the police spokesman.
Pate said he is waiting for audits to be completed for the other two school district embezzlement cases.
"The unfortunate thing about this is, not only are these people stealing from the school district, it costs money to gather the evidence. So it's taxpayer money on taxpayer money," Pate said. "It's just, truly, taxpayers being victimized."
Reach Casey Grove at casey.grove@adn.com or 257-4589.
By CASEY GROVE
Anchorage Daily News