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Ex-YSU employee charged with racking up 16k on credit card
By Joe Gorman
YOUNGSTOWN
A former Youngstown State University employee was arraigned Friday in municipal court on charges he used a university credit card to funnel more than $16,000 in cash to himself.
Judge Robert Milich set bond at $10,000 for Jeffrey Butts Jr., 41, of Bennington Avenue, who was arrested earlier Friday and arraigned via video hookup from the Mahoning County jail on a charge of misuse of a credit card, a fourth-degree felony.
A criminal complaint filed against Butts charged him with misusing the credit card from July 29 through Aug. 26 last summer.
City Prosecutor Dana Lantz said Butts was an administrative assistant in the university’s Islamic Studies department. She said he was using the card to get cash for himself for his own personal use.
Lantz said YSU police investigated the case, and it took a long time for charges to be brought because several search warrants had to be served to examine credit-card and financial records.
Butts no longer works for the university, said YSU spokesman Ron Cole. Cole said he resigned when the theft was discovered.
The misuse was reported to campus authorities first in September, which was when Butts stopped working for the university. Butts was not the cardholder but was an assistant to the employee who was the cardholder.
Cole said the employee who was the cardholder still works for the university.
Lantz said she charged Butts only with the dollar amount she had records for. She said it is possible that more charges could be added when the case is presented to a grand jury.