A former employee at Oklahoma State University has been charged with embezzlement. The 55-year-old woman worked in the OSU Food and Agriculture Products Center, or OSU FAPC. She is accused of taking over $3,000 from the school, and a warrant for her arrest was issued on Dec. 16.
The investigation
The accused woman was working as a financial assistant at OSU FAPC where she had access to a cash box that contained customer payments. When an audit of the center’s financial records found a discrepancy between the number of animals processed and the available funds, an investigation was conducted to find the missing money.
During the investigation, interviews with a student and the accused woman’s sister confirmed that the accused woman would have had access to the missing money. The auditor then asked the accused woman to write a statement regarding the missing money, and she confessed.
Financial hardships
Not all embezzlement charges involve greedy businessmen who take millions of dollars to finance lavish lifestyles. In many cases, ordinary people who are down on their luck make a poor decision to take a small amount of cash that they happen to have access to.
In the accused woman’s affidavit, she indicated that she had been having financial hardships, and she was not proud that she had taken the cash. While financial hardships cannot get a person off of an embezzlement charge, in some cases, they can help to lower a sentence. The prosecution may also go easier on a person who is genuinely remorseful.
