Equestrian park facilitated thefts, audit says

If managers of the Salt Lake County Equestrian Park and Event Center had heeded county auditors' earlier recommendations, an employee would not have gotten away with allegedly embezzling more than $50,000, according to a new audit.

"She (the employee) stated that the occurrence rate of her thefts increased when she could see that management was not implementing recommendations from the report," Salt Lake County Auditor Craig Sorensen and two other auditors stated in the audit report, released Friday.

The first audit was done in May 1999.

The employee, 46, a secretary, was charged in 3rd District Court earlier this month with theft and misuse of public money, both second-degree felonies, and stealing, destroying or mutilating public records by a custodian, a third-degree felony. She allegedly modified and otherwise manipulated records over a period of several years.

One of the things the first audit had recommended was that a second employee review and sign off each day on monies received. "So, myself, as being the thief, coming the next day, would not have been able to have made any type of changes to the entries because the paperwork would have been reviewed," the employee told a county investigator.

Auditors linked the Equestrian Park embezzlement to problems earlier discovered in the county's fine arts division, which ended with the resignation of one high-ranking employee and the firing of another. Flush with ZAP tax money in the late 1990s, the county aggressively expanded existing facilities and built new ones, which "created challenges beyond the education, training and experience of these managers," the audit states.

"The recurring theme in these two audits was the rapid expansion of a county facility, and its related operating revenue, outstripping the resources available to adequately staff the operation. . . . The unintended consequence of this pattern is creation of an atmosphere that provides the opportunity for an employee to commit fraud."

The auditors recommended various checks and balances such as double-checking by other employees — some of the recommendations being repeats of earlier ones — to avoid fraud in the future.

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