Eighty-two percent of the open space and sewer funds embezzled by former Kennett Township Manager Lisa Moore will now be transferred back to those funds, following a unanimous vote by township supervisors at Wednesday’s meeting.
The supervisors voted to “close out the financial liabilities” related to Moore’s embezzlement and transfer $642,435 to the open space fund and $446,069 to the sewer fund. The transfers will come from the general fund and represent money recovered by the township since the embezzlement was first discovered in May 2019.
“We would then write off the remaining liabilities of $141,022 and $97,917 respectively,” Kennett Finance Director Amy Heinrich wrote in a briefing summary to the supervisors.
“We’ve reported a net recovery of 82 percent,” Heinrich said. “All of the money that was stolen left the township by the general fund.”
Heinrich said that Moore is on parole and required to make restitution to the township for the remaining 18 percent if she is employed.
The supervisors decided in January to stop additional recovery efforts, with the township manager at the time, Eden Ratliff, reporting that “further recovery efforts by the township at this time would incur additional legal fees that cannot be justified given the probability of further success.”
Wednesday’s meeting also marked the first time since the embezzlement discovery in 2019 that the township had a clean financial audit.
Chris Herr of Maillie LLP, the independent auditing firm brought in five years ago during the embezzlement investigation, said the township received an “unmodified opinion on all funds.
“No instances of noncompliance material to the financial statements of the township were disclosed during the audit,” he wrote in a summary of audit findings that were presented publicly. “No material weaknesses relating to the audit of the financial statements were identified during the audit.”
About Monica Fragale
Monica Thompson Fragale is a freelance reporter who spent her life dreaming of being in the newspaper business. That dream came true after college when she started working at The Kennett Paper and, years later The Reporter newspaper in Lansdale and other dailies. She turned to non-profit work after her first daughter was born and spent the next 13 years in that field. But while you can take the girl out of journalism, you can’t take journalism out of the girl. Offers to freelance sparked the writing bug again started her fingers happily tapping away on the keyboard. Monica lives with her husband and two children in Kennett Square.
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