By Katy Savage, Standard Staff
HARTLAND — The volunteer treasurer of the First Universalist Society was arrested after she allegedly stole more than $7,500 of her church’s money.
Tamara Ross of Hartland was arrested after an audit found nine checks totaling $7,911 were either never deposited or unaccounted for between Sept. 3, 2014 and April 11, 2015.
She allegedly took $3,500 from church fundraisers, like the annual Chocolate Auction, the community prom and rummage sale. The rest of the money was supposed to go to organizations the church supports, like the Hartland Christmas Project. Ross made checks out to cash and recorded the funds going to organizations, though the organizations never received that money and the board never approved the gifts. Ross apparently took $400 from the bean supper in March 2015 and $260 from the prom fundraiser that same month.
“It appears Ross wrote unauthorized checks for cash and attempted to deceive board members by making these checks appear to be for fundraiser seed money,” an audit by Balanced Edged Forensic Accounting and Investigations concluded.
Ross was elected treasurer in January 2014. The church board started noticing problems almost a year later.
“Her financial reports were often disorganized and unclear,” the audit said.
The church board appointed Dan Poor as assistant treasurer and agreed to hire a part-time bookkeeper at a paying that person around $1,500 in 2015 and 2016.
“They added the individuals because they believed Ross was having difficulty handling the treasurer responsibilities,” the audit report said.
Churches aren’t required to have regular audits like other nonprofits and they aren’t required to submit financial information to maintain status as a nonprofit organization.
“(The bookkeeping) had been done by volunteers for more than two centuries,” Rev. Paul Sawyer said. The results of hiring somebody “turned up some troubling anomalies.”
Ross was asked to step down April 20, 2015 when suspicions arose. Church President Colleen Spence called state police May 19, 2015.
“(Ross) basically admitted to me she ended up taking the money,” Trooper Gary Salvatore said.
Ross told the police she forgot to make deposits.
“Before she knew it she was spending the money,” Salvatore said.
She was using it for groceries, Ross told him, for example.
“She confessed in circles,” said Salvatore. One moment she told police she didn’t take the money and the next she was saying she was going to pay it back.
“Why would you pay back money you didn’t take?” Salvatore said. “She had no real good reason.”
Attempts to reach Ross weren’t successful.
Embezzlement is more prevalent in this state than any others, a study by Marquet International, Ltd. found. Vermont has one of the highest nonprofit organizations per capita and is laden with small businesses, the kind of businesses that are likely to hire bookkeepers and treat them like family.
“Over and over and over again you hear the same story,” said Christopher Marquet, the owner of Marquet International. “Human nature doesn’t change. In any geography you always have people willing to do bad, that’s true in Vermont and New York City.
“Nonprofits tend to be common victims of this kind of fraud because they’re wide open. They tend not to have the big budgets to pay for audits. The people on the boards believe in the cause of the organization. They’re not necessarily financial experts,” said Marquet who graduated from Dartmouth College and makes trips to visit his friend in Quechee.
“Vermont is close knit, friendly, trusting environment,” he said. “You have these little, small municipalities, little hamlets throughout Vermont where very small governments and government entities exist. There tends to be less scrutiny than what you would have in New York City.”
Balanced Edge fraud investigator Susan Peters, who completed the investigation for the Hartland church, sees 20-30 church embezzlement cases a year.
“I think it’s because of the nature of the churches. They’re very trusting and what happens is they don’t really rely on proper internal controls,” said Peters.
“People think, ‘No one will steal from the church,’” Peters said. “You really end up with a perfect storm for embezzlement. Some people seek those jobs out knowing that’s the situation.”
Insurance covered the majority of what Hartland lost. The Hartland church had an operating budget of $102,000 last year.
Its current budget is around $120,000, according to former treasurer Doug Hart. About $90,000 of that comes from pledges and $30,000 comes from fundraising.
The church gives an average of $100 to $3,400 on Sundays to charity organizations, like Volunteers in Action, Aging in Hartland and the Hartland Christmas Project.
“We don’t have a lot of money and the money we do raise comes from the hard work of our volunteers,” Sawyer said. The money Ross is accused of taking came from “hours and hours of volunteer work and turkey suppers and rummage sales,” Sawyer said.
Ross is not part of the congregation any longer and does not attend services.
“It was a difficult thing to come to grips with,” Sawyer said. “We spent time in prayer and just reminding ourselves who we are.”
The church’s main doctrine is love.
The board established tighter controls.
“It would be a lot harder for this situation to occur again and very unlikely given the policy and procedures work our board has done,” Sawyer said.
Hart was treasurer of the church for 10 years before Ross took his position. The books are managed on Quicken. He deposited money from Sunday collections, checked or made automatic deposits for pledges and paid bills. Occasionally he wrote checks.
Hart was part of the church Finance Circle, which wanted tighter control of church before Ross was treasurer.
“It’s generally accepted practice. I’ve been in other churches and I’m familiar with the practices,” Hart said.
But he didn’t think it would come to this.
“It’s been a difficult time for all of us,” he said. “The church is family we didn’t think we had to do anything extraordinary.”
Hart has been part of the church for 20 years.
“This is the first year in the history I’ve been at the church that we’ve actually met all our fundraising goals,” he said.