The money - gobs of it - was there. More was being added all the time. No one would know if it was gone.
So Brian Butz, athletics director at Lexington County's White Knoll High School, began dipping into an unofficial high school booster club bank account, taking out some $135,000, according to a 2010 arrest warrant issued by the Lexington County sheriff's office.
In the past few years, unfortunately, White Knoll's experience hasn't been all that rare in South Carolina. And the number of public embezzlement cases is continuing to rise.
Public employees are being accused of stealing taxpayer money they've been entrusted with or concocting schemes to bilk the public out of money. They involve all kinds of public agencies, including schools, foundations attached to public entities and magistrate's offices. "They tend to be people who would be the last ones you would think would do it," Richland County Sheriff Leon Lott said.
Recently, these cases have hit the news at the rate of about one a week:
On Sept. 7, Howe Springs Volunteer Fire Chief Shannon Smith was charged with embezzlement for allegedly taking more than $10,000 from the fire department in Florence County between 2007 and 2011. Smith also forged the title of a pickup that the department owned to make it appear the department sold it to him, according to a warrant in the case.
On Sept. 14, former Clemson University employee Eli Ker, 29, was charged with stealing $33,000 in money meant for students. Ker had been associate director of fraternity and sorority life.
On Thursday, Camden city attorney Charles Cushman was arrested and charged with official misconduct in a seven-year scheme in which he allegedly got people who were charged with low-level drug offenses to make a donation to a city drug fund in return for dropping the charges, according to a warrant. Cushman has not been charged with accessing that money, and no one has identified a motive as yet.
Most of the time, as in the above cases, it is SLED that brings, or helps bring, criminal charges against suspected embezzlers. The State Law Enforcement Division has several hundred detectives and specialized law officers who can deploy around the state.
Often, SLED is called because of its expertise. But since it's a statewide agency, it can bring an independence to a local investigation that a local law agency can't. Many misuse of public money cases happen in small towns or counties where everyone knows each other, where a police detective might go to the same church as his suspect, or his child to the same school as the suspect's child. "Police chiefs and sheriffs often call us in to avoid the appearance of conflict of interest," says SLED Chief Mark Keel, who has made prosecution of public corruption cases by his agency a priority.
The number of cases involving the misuse of public money is rising.
In 2010, SLED made 107 embezzlement, breach of trust and official misconduct charges. In 2011, SLED made 127 charges in those three categories.
So far this year, SLED has made 119 embezzlement, breach of trust cases and official misconduct charges. "There's plenty of time left in the year to have more of these cases than last year," Keel said.
SLED doesn't keep detailed statistics on those charges, but Keel said most of the cases involve a public agency or public money. Embezzlement and breach of trust nearly always involve public money, and official misconduct charges often involve money, he said.
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