Cheryl Blakeman was charged with theft Monday after allegedly stealing money while serving as treasurer of Springfield's Parent-Teacher Organization and using it to pay her bills.
After a new PTO board was elected earlier this year, members realized financial records left by Blakeman weren't adding up, so they went to the authorities. New Middletown police said when they questioned Blakeman about it, she confessed.
"It's sorta sad, that allegedly someone would take that money and divert it for their own use," said Springfield Local Superintendent Debbie Mettee.
The money, Mettee said, came from the entire community to help local youngsters. Police said Blakeman took as much as $20,000 since 2004. Chief Vince D'Egidio said Blakeman would take it from the PTO account and use it to pay off debt.
Police said Blakeman deposited the funds at the Huntington Bank branch where she worked as a teller. When a new PTO board was elected earlier this year, minutes taken by the group state Blakeman told other members the records she'd been keeping over the years had been shredded. That left the new board wondering where their money really was.
While police said Blakeman has cooperated with their investigation, they are still waiting on transaction records from Huntington to verify the figures.
In the meantime, Mettee said board members are left feeling betrayed by one of their own.
Since the theft was discovered, the PTO board has instituted a number of internal controls and other measures to prevent this kind of theft in the future, including requiring two signatures on all financial statements. That's something the former treasurer reportedly had not been doing.
