Lack of accountability

[WNYresident]

West Seneca fire official gets prison for stealing $137,000

Updated: December 6, 2011, 11:41 AM
A West Seneca fire district official was sentenced today to one to three years in prison for embezzling $137,866 to help pay college tuition for his two children.
The judge also ordered Norman Baker, 61, former treasurer of West Seneca Fire District No. 1, to pay $36,000 in restitution over the next 10 years.
Erie County Judge Thomas P. Franczyk called Baker's crime "a breach of trust."
Baker wrote 77 unauthorized checks to himself and his wife for amounts between $2,000 and $5,000 during eight years and concealed the payments through fictitious claims and altered records, an audit found.

Read the full story in the Buffalo News

[WNYresident]

Baker wrote 77 unauthorized checks to himself and his wife for amounts between $2,000 and $5,000 during eight years and concealed the payments through fictitious claims and altered records, an audit found.

There wasn't one other person at all monitoring where this money was going fictitious or not? How many other fire departments have so many checks written to people within the department versus directly to the "payee" of the bill?

[WNYresident]

"This is a classic case of the fox guarding the hen house," Franczyk said.

And this is a problem we have in Erie County in a lot of the departments our tax money funds.