Friday, September 30, 2005
Property owners testified that their tax payments were not recorded.
By LAURE CIOFFI
VINDICATOR PENNSYLVANIA STAFF
NEW CASTLE, Pa. -- Gloria Conti was a loyal employee.
She made bank deposits for her boss, paid his cable bill and even took him car shopping.
But, Conti says, the money used for those things did not belong to her boss -- it belonged to the taxpayers of Lawrence County.
Conti's boss, Lawrence County Treasurer Gary F. Felasco Jr., was ordered Thursday to stand trial in Lawrence County Common Pleas Court after a four-hour preliminary hearing in Lawrence County Central Court.
He is charged with theft by failure to make required disposition of funds, embezzlement and misapplication of entrusted property and two counts of violating the state Ethics Act.
Prosecutors contend in the charges that Felasco took more than $40,000 from his office from October to December 2003. But during Thursday's hearing, witnesses alleged the theft went on before and after that time.
Conti, who was given immunity from prosecution in exchange for her testimony, said Felasco would call her to his office and instruct her to take cash from the front drawer, put it in an envelope and bring it to him.
"He would say pull $2,000, $1,000 or $100," she said. Conti said there were days when he would tell her to give him as much cash as possible.
She noted that he would sometimes call in his requests and have her give the envelopes full of cash to his mother, Helen, who works in the treasurer's office as a clerk.
Conti said Felasco told her to pull checks that were sent by mail and substitute them for the cash taken from the front drawer to make the books balance at the end of each day.
Three property owners testified at the hearing that they paid their property taxes by check through the mail in December 2003. All three received notices the next year that their taxes had not been paid.
The property owners produced canceled checks to prove they had paid taxes.
Police contend that Felasco later deleted those people's names from delinquent-tax rolls.
Unpaid property taxes
Problems surfaced after Lawrence County commissioners removed Felasco from his appointed post as tax claim director. Commissioners learned in February 2003 that Felasco had not paid his own property taxes since 2000.
Cathy Toscano Baker, another deputy treasurer in his office, testified she discovered in mid-2003 that Felasco was not paying his property taxes and asked him about it.
"He said he would take care of it," she said.
But Felasco did not take care of it until it was first reported by The Vindicator in February 2003. Later that same week, Felasco paid the taxes and penalties in full.
Baker said she did not alert anyone over that more than six-month time frame that Felasco had not paid his property taxes and even pulled his paper work from a stack that was set for the yearly tax claim sale to prevent it from being discovered.
Conti's account
Conti also testified that she never told any officials that Felasco was taking money from the office.
"Whatever he told me to do, I did," she said.
That included taking $3,500 from the county taxes and driving Felasco to Matt's Auto Sales on North Jefferson Street, where Felasco bought a 1990 Chevrolet Conversion Van in May 2003; taking $261.51 cash in August 2002 and $132.90 cash in January 2004 to the Adelphia Cable office in New Castle in pay Felasco's overdue cable bills; and taking cash from the office numerous times to Felasco's bank after calls were made that his personal checking account was overdrawn, according to testimony.
Conti testified that when there wasn't enough money in the front office, she was instructed to remove money from the office safe. She said the safe was supposed to contain $4,000 cash at all times, and the front drawer was to have $1,000 cash.
Conti said after Felasco was removed as tax claim bureau director, he was concerned that other county officials would want to audit the treasurer's office safe, which was short of the required $4,000.
She said Felasco asked Conti and her husband, Donald, to give him their tax return that year to help make the vault whole.
"It was $1,000 short, and he knew we had our tax check in. He asked if we would do it. He said he would pay us back, and he did," Conti said.
Conti testified that she did not take any of the money for herself.
But Felasco's attorney, James Ross, was skeptical of Conti's testimony.
"I think this hinges on the testimony of one person, and I think there are a lot of credibility issues," he said after the hearing.
Lawrence County officials are still debating whether to conduct more audits to determine if more money is missing from the treasurer's office.
The county focused its only audit in the matter on the three-month window mentioned in the charges.
cioffi@vindy.com