Posted May. 1, 2008
A theft from the Concord Monitor, allegedly by a former employee, is now pegged at between $100,000 and $150,000, according to a police report. An indictment filed six months ago had accused Lisa Grass, the company's former accountant, only of stealing "more than $1,000."
The police report, which was recently made public, also reveals how the authorities learned of the theft. It says Grass was the first to report it - but did so knowing Monitor officials suspected her and were about to call the police themselves.
Grass, 45, of Lambert Lake, Maine, is charged with one count of theft by unauthorized taking, a felony. The charge accuses her of stealing money from the Monitor from June 2000 to February 2004, when she left the company. She is free on bail while she awaits trial.
Grass has been under police investigation since at least January 2004, but aside from the indictment handed up against her in November, little information about the theft or the investigation has been made public. That changed this month when Grass's attorney, Mark Sisti, included a police report and his correspondence with a prosecutor in Grass's public court file.
According to the documents, Grass confessed the theft to the Concord police in February 2004. She said she began stealing from the Monitor a few months after being hired in January 1999 as an accountant. She estimated that she had taken between $100,000 and $150,000 during her five years at the Monitor, according to the documents.
Grass said she stole the money by writing company checks to herself or her credit card companies but recording the payments as going to vendors who did business with the Monitor. She used the names of real vendors and phony vendors she had created, according to the documents. Grass also said she stole money by writing checks out to "petty cash" and keeping the proceeds.
Grass told the police she learned how to manipulate the company's checks from the Monitor controller who was supposed to be supervising her. Grass said that controller, who no longer works for the company, had reimbursed her for some medical expenses by having Grass write a check to herself and then recording the check as having gone to a vendor.
"She stated that after seeing (the controller) do this, she realized that she could do this herself," the police report said. Grass told the police she used the money to pay her bills and that all the money she took had been spent, according to the police report.
Grass said neither that controller nor his successor caught on to what she was doing. The thieving went undetected even though the second controller occasionally spot-checked Grass's accounting, according to the police report.
Yesterday, Tom Brown, president of the Monitor's parent company, Newspapers of New England, disputed Grass's allegations.
Brown said it was never company policy to reimburse employees as Grass described to the police. He said he has no evidence that the company's former controller had told Grass to cut herself a check and to record it as having gone to a vendor.
"I would be shocked if that were the case," Brown said. "That would be totally against company policy."
'Ashamed of herself'
During the interview with the police in 2004, Grass said she had decided to come forward because she felt guilty about what she'd done, according to the police report. "She stated that she was ashamed of herself for what she was doing," the report said.
Grass also told the police that if she hadn't come forward, the Monitor would never have known she'd been stealing money since 1999, the report said. It was Grass's seeming cooperation and desire to right a wrong that prompted the Merrimack County Attorney's Office to propose a plea deal that would spare Grass prison time, according to the documents.
But days after interviewing Grass, the Concord police learned that the Monitor did suspect Grass of stealing and was preparing a complaint for the police, according to the documents. Grass's Monitor supervisor at the time told the police he was investigating the accounts and had asked Grass to request copies of missing checks from the company's bank. Grass placed the order as asked but then cancelled it, according to the police report.
That conversation with the Monitor prompted County Attorney Dan St. Hilaire to cease discussions with Grass and her attorney about a plea offer that spared Grass prison time. In March 2004, St. Hilaire told Sisti the deal was off.
"This was not a case where someone had an attack of conscience and wanted to do the right thing," St. Hilaire wrote in a letter to Sisti. "The fact of the matter is, your client did not have an attack of conscience, but was discovered stealing by her employer."
St. Hilaire continued: "In my mind, the meeting we had (to discuss a plea deal) was merely a race to see who could come to the police first."
Sisti responded several days later in his own letter. He said Grass had told him she wanted to confess because she felt guilty. He also said given that Grass had not been fired - and had in fact been given glowing performance reviews by her Monitor supervisor - he believed the Monitor had not become aware of the thefts.
Grass's "tearful recounting of events to me . . . indicated in no uncertain terms that she was wrestling with a guilty conscience and was in need of confessing her behavior to law enforcement as soon as possible," Sisti wrote.
Sisti told St. Hilaire he expected him to stick by a plea offer that kept Grass out of prison. When St. Hilaire refused, Sisti asked a judge to transfer the case to another prosecutor's office. A judge agreed, and it was recently given to the Hillsborough County Attorney's Office in Manchester.
Karen Gorham, a prosecutor there who is handling the case, said she could not comment on the theft or charge against Grass because she is still reviewing the file. Gorham said she could not say whether Grass's claim that she stole between $100,000 and $150,000 was accurate.
Grass could not be reached for comment. St. Hilaire and Sisti also declined to discuss the case.
Saddened, disappointed
Brown, the company president, said he has been advised by the authorities not to discuss how much money was stolen from the Monitor. He said the case has saddened and disappointed him. It also made clear to him that the company did not have proper accounting controls in place.
"Without blaming anyone in particular, those controls obviously broke down," said Brown, who was publisher of the Monitor at the time. "Obviously, we placed a lot of trust in Lisa. It's been a humbling experience."
During her interview with the police, Grass also questioned Brown's accounting practices inside the Monitor.
She said he was "shifting" money within the Monitor's budget to make company's commercial printing operation appear more successful than it was. (In addition to publishing the daily Monitor, the company also runs a commercial business that prints publications for other companies and organizations.)
Brown also said neither he nor anyone else at the company had shifted money within the budget to make one part of the operation appear more successful. He said he would have talked with the company controller about how to account for each part of the company's operation and expenses.
"But we would be a straightforward as we could be," Brown said. "The Monitor is subject to an annual outside audit, and we make sure our accounting practices are legitimate and above board."
