Former Waukesha County employee accused of stealing $300,000 from senior meal sites

Published on: 2/4/2010

Waukesha — A former Waukesha County account clerk is accused of stealing more than $300,000 donated by senior citizens for their meals at 12 nutrition sites over the last six years, county officials said Thursday.

Kham Sisaleumsak, 44, of Waukesha was charged with 13 counts of felony theft in a business setting. She was arrested at her home Thursday night.

If convicted, she faces potentially decades in prison.

According to the criminal complaint:

Sisaleumsak was responsible for reconciling bank statements of 12 different checking accounts in community banks - accounts into which each meal site manager who collected donations would make daily deposits. She also was responsible for writing periodic checks from those accounts into the county's general fund.

After a supervisor opened a bank statement in the employee's absence, she discovered a check image showing the supervisor's forged signature on a check made to Sisaleumsak.

The employee, who earned $36,899 a year, was confronted and admitted she had written two checks for a total of $1,350 and was fired. She told county officials she had gambled the money and couldn't replace it.

The discovery was made in June, but the Waukesha County Sheriff's Department and county officials have been investigating ever since and more could be uncovered, sheriff's spokesman Detective Steve Pederson said.

The county traced 278 checks totaling $303,053 between 2002 and 2009 that were forged, according to a Dec. 11 memo from administration chief Norman A. Cummings to County Executive Dan Vrakas. In a memo to the County Board on Thursday, he said sheriff's investigators say the figure now has reached $360,000.

The criminal complaint charges Sisaleumsak with thefts totaling about $277,000 and dating to February 2004. District Attorney Brad Schimel said the statute of limitations prevents the state from charging for earlier offenses in this case.

The complaint says that in addition to the checks Sisaleumsak wrote to herself, another 91 checks from the 12 nutrition site accounts written out to Waukesha County and endorsed by her manager were never deposited by Sisaleumsak. Cummings explained that would have left enough money in the nutrition site accounts to cover checks she's accused of writing out to herself.

Sisaleumsak began working for Waukesha County part time in May 1988 and started as a Sheriff's Department clerk full time in September 1988. She was promoted in 1989 and transferred to the Department of Aging as an account clerk in July 1990. She was promoted to account clerk-2 in 1994.

Cummings said the missing funds had nothing to do with cutbacks in Waukesha County's nutrition sites. The county closed two of the three sites in the city of Waukesha in January, citing the need for efficiency and the growth in home-delivered meal programs.

But word of the theft charges outraged a Brookfield man who volunteers delivering meals to seniors and the homebound once a week. Grant Thomas, 71, said it's a slap not only to the elderly who donate from their limited funds for the nutrition program, but to the volunteers - many seniors themselves - who make the programs possible.

"Stealing from programs designed to help the needy is more reprehensible than the average crime," he said.

Oversight questioned

Thomas also questioned how the alleged thefts could have gone undetected for so long.

"These people running these things are asleep at the switch," he said.

The county's insurance carrier is expected to cover the loss, Cummings said.

Waukesha County provides meals at the congregate nutrition sites for free, but seniors donate what they can.

Asked whether county financial watchdogs should have caught the discrepancies, Cummings said the combination of growing revenue from home delivered meals with revenue from the congregate nutrition sites might have masked what was happening.

"This shouldn't have happened," he said.

Schimel said: "How on earth could this have gotten this far out of control? I don't know how this procedure, where she did everything, came about, but that seems problematic."

Schimel said county finance officials run "a pretty tight ship" that, in his tenure, has prevented similar reports of theft.

Cummings said the charges are unlike anything he has seen in 25 years with the county.

You'd have to go back three decades for the last large embezzlement case in Waukesha County. In 1981, a county cashier, Karla Ranieri, was convicted of theft of $114,472 from the clerk of courts office where she worked. She served more than three years in prison.

Cummings said steps were taken immediately to tighten procedures in the Aging and Disability Resource Center. His department also immediately reviewed all county bank accounts and petty cash accounts and will review all future account reconciliations.

A consultant was hired and gave seminars on internal financial controls and loss prevention attended by about 288 employees last fall, he said.