Group sues suspect

The bookkeeper was on probation for diverting checks at her previous job.
YOUNGSTOWN -- A kidney dialysis group and its management company have sued a bookkeeper accused of stealing almost $1.7 million from the dialysis group; also named in the suit are her husband and the employment agency that placed her on the job.
The civil lawsuit was filed Friday in Mahoning County Common Pleas Court by North Central Pennsylvania Dialysis Clinics LLC and SPCS Investment Co., Ltd. -- the company that managed North Central -- both located in Boardman.
Defendants in the suit are Deborah Lee Toda and her husband, Paul Pollis, of Southwind Drive Northeast, Howland, and Ryan Alternative Staffing Inc. of Boardman.
Toda, 48, remains in Mahoning County jail, charged in a criminal case with felony theft and accused of taking the money over the two years she worked with SPCS as the dialysis clinics' bookkeeper.
A Boardman police detective said Toda would write monthly checks of up to $50,000 in the name of a company with which her employer did business, but she had an account set up under that same name, allowing her to cash them.
She'd then alter the clinic's bank statements to reflect that the money went to other companies with which the clinic did business, the detective said.
Toda was arrested June 16 at her residence, the same day Boardman and Howland police searched her home and seized vehicles and about $200,000 worth of jewelry.
About the lawsuit
The civil suit said Toda "has unlawfully converted and disposed of the property to her own use" and that her conduct justifies "any amount of exemplary and punitive damages to be determined at trial."
The suit, filed by Attys. Stephen T. Bolton and Martha L. Bushey, says Toda may have transferred assets to Pollis to avoid having to make restitution to the clinics. Pollis' former wife, Charlotte Nagi-Pollis, disappeared in 1994 while the Pollises lived in Girard and has never been found.
Ryan, which was supposed to do a background check on Toda, negligently placed Toda with SPCS to serve as NCPDC's full-time bookkeeper in April 2004 without reporting to SPCS or the dialysis group any findings concerning her criminal past, the suit said.
Toda was sentenced in 2001 to 30 months in federal prison, followed by three years' probation, on a bank fraud charge stemming from diversion of more than $414,000 in corporate checks from a Niles construction company, where she was a bookkeeper. She remains on probation in that case.
A woman reached at Ryan's offices, who would identify herself only as a company spokeswoman, declined to comment, saying Ryan officials hadn't received a copy of the lawsuit as of Monday afternoon. Pollis could not be reached for comment.