When a state employee succeeds in embezzling almost half-a-million dollars and avoids detection over the course of five years of annual Single Audits, it begs the question: “Who’s minding the store?” Current auditor Tom Salmon seems unsurprised by the discovery of long-term embezzlement by a woman in the Dept. of Children and Families, and blames his failure to detect it on aging software:

Salmon points to a state computer system called ACCESS that Kathy Lantagne used to authorize payouts, as one reason for possible break-downs in the system. ACCESS was new in 1983 and lacks more modern security checks to detect fraud.

To which he helpfully adds:

If someone wants to steal, they’re going to steal.

One might be excused for asking why we need a human Auditor at all if everything depends  on the software.  According to Doug Hoffer, who is challenging Tom Salmon in the upcoming election, Salmon should have picked-up on certain “red flags” in the expenditures made by the Department:

“There were two hundred fifty checks to unapproved entities all mailed to one address.  Auditors are trained to recognize patterns and to look for anomalies; that’s their job.  It is entirely possible for these activities to go unnoticed for a year or two.  But for the Single Audit to miss this for five years in a row raises some questions about the sampling protocols.”

Furthermore, says Hoffer in a press release,  deficient software is a pretty weak excuse for the number of years the theft remained undiscovered.

If Salmon knew of the weaknesses in the system, why didn’t he take steps to beef up the audit?  Moreover, what, if anything, did he do after learning of the embezzlement back in February?  Did he review the audit procedures with the consulting auditors at KPMG?  Did he step up efforts for the next Single Audit?

And if that one slipped through the gaping hole in the fence, how much more from other departments may be similarly misappropriated?   When asked what the potential loss to the state through embezzlement might be,  Salmon replied:

Conservative fraud estimates would be that we are at risk for millions. Millions in fraud.

Millions?…really, Mr. Salmon?  In these cash-strapped times, when the Governor was looking to balance his books on the backs of the state’s most vulnerable populations, wouldn’t it have been helpful if we had had an auditor who was a little more proactive about doing his job?