Q&A

PTO funds used for personal use by Treasurer

Our Treasurer is under investigation for forging the President's name on some checks. But it was also discovered that some of the fraud was on checks the President actually signed. I know that the Treasurer is solely responsible for the forged checks. But because some of the bad checks were signed by the President would the Treasurer be held solely responsible for these?
- deipurple

Maybe, but not really enough details here. Did the President sign blank checks? (Never a good idea.) Or did the President sign legitimate checks that were then altered or fraudulently cashed?
- mum24kids
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Both. Though I would not say that the president signed a bunch of blank checks for this person but when the treasurer brought to her some reciepts and said she needed reimbursed the receipts were not reviewed for legitimate charges (i.e.: one had one item for pto business and the rest was personal items) and this check was not filled in first with proper amounts. I am not sure about the rest ... I was not invited to finish with the reconsiliation of the rest of the mess.
- deipurple
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Will we be able to get all the money stolen even if some of the money stolen was due to the neglegence of the PTO and the other members and not just forgery?
- deipurple
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Do you have insurance? Your insurance company would be in a better position to answer this. When you sign the application to buy coverage, you need to stipulate that certain controls will be in place--different companies have different rules. You might have a deductible that will need to be covered by the parent group, which means you won't get all the money back anyway. The insurance company could reject some of the claim if their rules weren't followed. Still hard to say how this might shake out--if the president was shown receipts and given a somewhat reasonable explanation for the expenses, even if they were personal, then it's still on the treasurer. And I'm not sure the actions of the president are severe enough to be considered negligence.
- mum24kids
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As far as I know we do not have insurance. I know I fought for over a year to have the bi-laws be done. So we do have them now. A comment I got was 'bad things don't happen here'. I just don't see how unless the ex-treasurer finally gets a change of heart and just decides to pay it all back that we won't get back anything except what is to be given back from the bank for the actual forged checks. But the bank won't take responsibilty of the checks that were actually signed by the President, as far as I know. I am assuming this will have to go to court before we get that back. When I was in charge of signing checks at one of my jobs I would be fined for signing a bad check. That means any check that does not have proper documentation.
- deipurple
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