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Food service worker accused of embezzling $110,000 from Brown Deer school district

Posted at 10:14 PM, Jan 17, 2019
and last updated 2019-01-17 23:16:20-05

BROWN DEER — A woman entrusted with helping to feed students across the Brown Deer School District is facing felony theft charges after the superintendent alleges more than $100,000 in district money went missing.

The district pays a private company, Taher, Inc., to provide food services to its students.

According to a press release from the school district, Taher Inc. had hired the employee at the center of the allegations in 2008 to be the on-site supervisor for food services at the Brown Deer School District.

District officials said the alleged theft, totaling approximately $110,000, occurred over a five-year period between 2011 and 2016.

Superintendent Deb Kerr said the suspect oversaw students' food payments, a portion of which are supposed to go to the district.

But some of that money was never deposited into the designated, Brown Deer School District account.

Kerr said the suspect was skimming relatively small amounts of money, consistently, over a long period of time.

"Having it occur over that period of time, we did eventually realize it was very significant - over six figures," Kerr said.

The suspect quit her job in 2016 shortly before the district began investigating.

“Through a comprehensive investigation, the School District of Brown Deer determined that a former food service director misappropriated funds from the district’s food service account,” the district said in a news release.

Kerr said money from that account is used “to maintain prices for lunch, to buy new equipment, and to invest in new food programs” across the district.

“Several parents later complained that they had not received full credit for the payments they had made,” the press release said. “These complaints led to the investigation and subsequent audit, which was paid for by Taher, Inc.”

Kerr said Taher Inc. did reimburse the district for the missing money over the summer.

“You always want to think the best of everybody,” Kerr said. "Whether it’s an outside vendor or one of your own employees.”

“This was just one employee from a very large food service provider,” she said.

She said the district has made changes to ensure nothing like this happens again.

"We will be having our own district employee count the money," Kerr said, "and then working jointly with our business office to make sure our cash sales and reconciliations are matching."

Online records show a criminal complaint against the suspect has been filed and she’s expected to appear in court later this month.