Most of the various articles bought with money stolen from the U have been returned, but there’s still an alleged $12,000 loss to the university, said Salt Lake District Attorney Clark Harms.
Nicole Reames, former executive secretary in the David Eccles School of Business, allegedly stole more than $24,000 between January and May of last year. She was charged Friday with two second-degree felonies.
If convicted, she faces a maximum of 30 years in prison and a $20,000 fine, Harms said.
According to Detective Troy Martinez, Reames allegedly began stealing because of financial trouble.
She continued until she was caught on May 12, 2003, after administrative assistant Michelle Young noticed suspicious orders on UCard accounts.
It was common practice for professors to have money from campus orders placed on their UCards to use in copy centers. The unusual orders Young noticed had a professor’s name but not his number.
It was discovered that the number belonged to Reames, and that she had used the names of five other people to hide $483 worth of purchases made with school funds on her card, Martinez said.
She was then put on administrative leave and an investigation ensued.
“Then the internal audit people started digging,” said Detective Mike McPharlin.
Reames said she would take checks from the School of Business and purchase orders to University Bookstore, Franklin Covey and Deseret Book.
She would either forge signatures, use stamp signatures or simply say professors had forgotten to sign the forms, said Steve Tallman, chairperson of management department in School of Business.
Some stores even allowed her to return items the next day, purchased with university order forms, and exchange them for cash, he said.
It was inevitable that she’d be caught, he said, because accounts eventually have to be reconciled.
“When we hired her, there was no evidence of this behavior,” he said.
Items purchased include several boxes of crayons, cleaning solutions, a laptop computer, digital camera, computer equipment, cookbooks, three CD players, four Nalgene bottles, stationery, German vocabulary cards, LDS fiction and several LDS movies.
Reames was not charged until last Friday because that’s how long this type of investigation takes, Harms said.
“There’s a difference between knowing something happened and being able to prove it beyond reasonable doubt,” he said.
Now that charges have been filed, she will negotiate a time with U Police to surrender herself, he said.