Posted by madcityradio.com on March 12, 2009 at 16:43:26:
Employee charged with stealing from Middleton paper
Mike Miller � TCT 3/12/2009 12:36 pm
A Verona woman was charged today with felony counts of theft and fraud for stealing $3,400 from the Middleton Times Tribune -- her employer -- by allegedly putting company money into her own credit card accounts.
Dawn Streeter-DeVoss, 46, is charged with using credit card numbers of others to make it appear they had a credit coming from the company, then putting that credit into her own accounts.
The criminal complain filed against Streeter-DeVoss Thursday says she made such transfers on 20 occasions between Nov. 12, 2008 and Jan. 9. The thefts were discovered on Jan. 13 when security personnel at Anchor Bank notified the News Publishing Company in Black Earth about the unusual transactions, the complaint says.
The Middleton Times Tribune, which serves Middleton and the surrounding area, is owned by News Publishing Company of Black Earth, which also owns other newspapers in Dane, Green and Sauk counties including those in Black Earth, Mount Horeb, New Glarus and Sauk Prairie.
The criminal complaint says that when Thomas J. Finger, controller and chief financial officer of News Publishing Company, first contacted Streeter-DeVoss about the missing money she admitted to taking the funds and admitted she knew it amounted to stealing.
She later detailed for Middleton Police detective Patricia Faust the process she used to transfer the funds to her credit card accounts at the Associated Bank and the Park Bank, and said she intended to repay the money when she received her tax refund, the complaint says.
Most of the fraudulent transfers came in the amounts of $150 but by January of this year she was taking $300 at a time the complaint says. She made three such transfers in a four-day period from Jan. 6 through Jan. 9, the complaint says.
If convicted on both counts Streeter-DeVoss would face a maximum combined term of 9 1/2 years in prison and on extended supervision.