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District of Montana
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Tuesday, September 16, 2008
SUSAN TOCCI CAMPBELL SENTENCED IN U.S. DISTRICT COURT
Bill Mercer, United States Attorney for the District of Montana, announced today that during a federal court session in Helena, on September 16, 2008, before Senior U.S. District Judge Charles C. Lovell, SUSAN TOCCI CAMPBELL, a 58-year-old resident of Helena, appeared for sentencing. CAMPBELL was sentenced to a term of:
- Prison: 75 months
- Special Assessment: $300
- Restitution: $973,866.34
- Supervised Release: 3 years
CAMPBELL was sentenced in connection with her guilty plea to embezzlement, income tax evasion and aggravated identity theft.
In an Offer of Proof filed by the United States, the government stated it would have proved at trial the following:
From December 10, 2002, until June 14, 2007, CAMPBELL served as an accountant for the Facilities Management Bureau of the Montana Department of Administration General Services Division in Helena. The Facilities Management Bureau manages all the state owned property within a ten-mile radius of the Montana State Capital building. Management of the properties includes securing vendors and authorizing payment to the vendors for services they provide.
During the period 1998 through October 30, 2006, Jack's Technical Assistance contracted with the General Services Division to provide mechanical maintenance services. Jack's Technical Assistance is owned by Jack Campbell, SUSAN CAMPBELL'S husband.
Vendor contract payments are initially reviewed and approved by a Facilities Manager (FM) or an in-house Engineer. Once the FM or Engineer approves the invoice, it is then submitted to the Accounting Technician. The Accounting Technician, using his/her user ID and password, enters the transaction into the computer to request that a warrant (check) be issued to the vendor. The request is then sent to the Accounting Supervisor for approval.
On June 5, 2007, after returning from a break, an Accounting Technician, D.M., observed CAMPBELL sitting at D.M.'s desk. Upon returning to her desk, D.M. opened a minimized window on her computer at which time she observed a payment request for Jack's Technical Assistance totaling $7,951. The Accounting Technician was suspicious of the request as she was aware that Jack's Technical Assistance no longer had a contract with the General Services Division. CAMPBELL, as Accounting Supervisor, knew the Accounting Technician's User ID and password for accessing the accounting system to request a warrant. CAMPBELL typically requested the Accounting Technician's password every 60 days, as the passwords expired on that rotation schedule.
On June 7, 2007, this same Accounting Technician was at Management Support in the Mitchell Building picking up warrants that she had requested earlier in the week. Upon signing the warrant log, the Accounting Technician noticed that CAMPBELL had signed the log for picking up a warrant the day before. This was the same day that CAMPBELL had volunteered to pick up the payroll checks. The Accounting Technician assumed that this was the warrant totaling $7,951 payable to Jack's Technical Assistance that CAMPBELL had likely requested on June 5, 2007. On the same day, the Accounting Technician was reviewing the sequential order of the document numbers and identified several documents that were missing.
During D.M.'s review, CAMPBELL questioned D.M. as to what she (D.M.) was doing. CAMPBELL told D.M. not to worry about the missing document numbers as no one ever looks at them. CAMPBELL further advised that one of the document numbers had been voided. Upon returning from lunch, the Accounting Technician noticed that the slip of paper that she wrote on to identify the missing documents numbers was gone.
On June 11, 2007, because of her suspicions, the Accounting Technician checked the accounting system and identified that one of the missing document numbers she had identified on June 7, 2007, was another payment request for Jack's Technical Assistance which totaled $11,099. On June 12, 2007, while requesting a payment to Verizon, she inputted what she believed to be the next document number and identified another payment request for Jack's Technical Assistance totaling $19,879.
On June 13, 2007, the Accounting Technician keyed in the missing document numbers that she had identified several days before and found that all of them were payment requests for Jack's Technical Assistance. The Accounting Technician has never requested any warrants (checks) be issued to Jack's Technical Assistance and has never authorized CAMPBELL to use her User ID and password in a fraudulent manner. A.B., the previous Accounting Technician, also confirmed to law enforcement that although she had provided CAMPBELL with her password every 30 to 60 days, she never authorized CAMPBELL to use her password and User ID for anything other than necessary and legitimate state business.
D.M. reported her concerns to another Department of Administration employee, who in turn, reported the matter to the Administrator, CAMPBELL'S supervisor. The Administrator investigated the concerns raised by the Accounting Technician and became aware of five payments to Jack's Technical Assistance totaling $73,092.05, for which he could not find any supporting documentation. He also learned that CAMPBELL had picked up each of the five checks from the Management Support Bureau.
On June 19, 2007, the Administrator and a Department of Administration attorney confronted CAMPBELL regarding their findings. CAMPBELL initially denied taking the money but later admitted during the meeting that she had taken it. CAMPBELL denied taking monies other than the $73,092.05 that the internal review had identified.
An auditor for the Montana Legislative Audit Division conducted a review of warrants issued to Jack's Technical Assistance. She found 20 payments totaling $739,312.47 that were not supported by either the contract with Jack's Technical Assistance, or other invoices and supporting documentation.
The following summarizes the unsupported warrants:
Date
Warrant #
Amount
Initiated By
Approved By
12/10/2002
04139181
$65,760.89
Not Available
Not Available
09/08/2003
05017584
$65,755.03
A.B.
CAMPBELL
07/29/2004
05931124
$23,591.95
A.B.
P.M.
11/23/2004
1149823
$66,395.60
A.B.
(A.B. on Sick Leave)
J.A.
12/21/2004
1160376
$33,986.86
A.B.
(A.B. on Sick Leave)
J.A.
05/06/2005
1219083
$39,122.00
A.B.
CAMPBELL
09/06/2005
07003708
$66,521.93
CAMPBELL
( CAMPBELL on Sick Leave)
J.A.
09/28/2005
1274269
$24,019.00
A.B.
(A.B. on Sick Leave)
CAMPBELL
10/19/2005
07078313
$66,521.93
A.B.
CAMPBELL
12/30/2005
1314057
$34,259.68
A.B.
CAMPBELL
07/26/2006
1399227
$74,170.22
A.B.
(A.B. on Sick Leave)
D.C.
10/04/2006
1424874
$59,765.00
A.B.
CAMPBELL
12/14/2006
08084820
$15,498.33
A.B.
CAMPBELL
01/09/2007
08122984
$18,567.00
A.B.
(A.B. on Sick Leave)
CAMPBELL
02/28/2007
1475881
$12,285.00
A.B.
CAMPBELL
04/26/2007
1495802
$15,497.63
D.M.
CAMPBELL
05/04/2007
1502516
$18,665.42
D.M.
CAMPBELL
06/06/2007
1511916
$7,951.00
D.M.
CAMPBELL
06/11/2007
1514972
$11,099.00
D.M.
CAMPBELL
06/14/2007
1515525
$19,879.00
D.M.
CAMPBELL
The total amount embezzled between December 2002 and June 2007 was
$739,312.47.
On November 8, 2007, law enforcement contacted CAMPBELL. CAMPBELL stated that beginning sometime during 2001, using A.B.'s User ID and password, she entered transactions into the accounting system to request the issuance of non-legitimate warrants to Jack's Technical Assistance. These requests were non-legitimate in that they were not supported by Jack's Technical Assistance invoices and did not represent payments for services provided by Jack's Technical Assistance. CAMPBELL advised that her scheme continued up until shortly before she was terminated. CAMPBELL had also used D.M.'s User ID and password to generate non-legitimate warrants payable to Jack's Technical Assistance.
CAMPBELL was shown a schedule reflecting 20 checks payable to Jack's Technical Assistance. CAMPBELL advised that these were the warrants that she referred to above as non-legitimate. To avoid detection, CAMPBELL ensured that the amounts for many of the non-legitimate warrants were the same as legitimate Jack's Technical Assistance service payments. An end of year report was generated showing the amounts paid to Jack's Technical Assistance, but CAMPBELL was the only one that typically reviewed it.
CAMPBELL confirmed that neither A.B. nor D.M. had ever authorized CAMPBELL to use their User IDs and passwords in such a manner. CAMPBELL and the Accounting Technicians knew each other's User IDs and passwords as a matter of operational practice in the event that someone was absent and needed to perform the other person's job.
Once the fraudulent warrant was issued, it was either mailed to Jack's Technical Assistance or maintained at the Management Support Division identified as a non-mailer, available for pickup. CAMPBELL believed that she picked most of these non-mailers up from the Management Support Division. Upon CAMPBELL obtaining the warrant, she would then deposit it into Jack's Technical Assistance's business account at Mountain West Bank. CAMPBELL advised that she was the bookkeeper for Jack's Technical Assistance, which included handling payroll and paying bills. However, CAMPBELL has never been a signatory on Jack's Technical Assistance's account.
Shortly after depositing the checks into Jack's Technical Assistance's Mountain West Bank account, CAMPBELL then wrote checks payable to herself, her son and her daughter-in-law by signing her husband's name.
Because there is no parole in the federal system, the "truth in sentencing" guidelines mandate that CAMPBELL will likely serve all of the time imposed by the court. In the federal system, CAMPBELL does have the opportunity to earn a sentence reduction for "good behavior." However, this reduction will not exceed 15% of the overall sentence.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Carl E. Rostad prosecuted the case for the United States.
The investigation was a cooperative effort between the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Criminal Investigation Division of the Internal Revenue Service.