Kennett Township residents and businesses will have an opportunity to tell a judge how they were impacted by the former township manager allegedly embezzling $3.2 million from Kennett Township.
Victim impact statements can be sent over email from now until Sept. 24 to Chester County Court of Common Pleas Judge David F. Bortner, who is presiding over Lisa Moore’s scheduled guilty plea on Oct. 4.
Current Kennett Township Manager Eden Ratliff sent a press release, as well as an email to all residents and businesses, on Wednesday afternoon inviting them to submit victim impact statements until Sept. 24.
“The Chester County District Attorney’s Office and the Kennett Township supervisors are inviting all Kennett Township residents and area businesses to write a victim’s impact statement and email it to victimimpact@chesco.org,” Ratliff wrote. “The statements should be in letter form and addressed to the Honorable Judge David F. Bortner.
“The letter should explain the direct and/or indirect ways an individual, family or business was impacted by the embezzlement and related crimes.”
A victim impact statement, according to the Chester County government website, is a way for those who have been impacted by a crime to share how it has affected them.
“As a crime victim, you have the opportunity to use this Victim Impact Statement to describe how this crime affected you and others close to you,” according to a Chester County document that answers frequently asked questions about victim impact statements, which can be found here.
“This statement has space for you to write about the physical, emotional, and financial effects of this crime, as well as any other changes in your life that you may have experienced as a result of the crime.”
All victim impact statement emails sent to victimimpact@chesco.org “must include your name, street or business address,” according to Ratliff’s press release. “The email address will be monitored by the Chester County District Attorney’s Office and any communications deemed inappropriate will not be submitted to the judge.”
Moore, who was the Kennett Township manager for about 22 years, was charged in December 2019 with 112 counts of first-, second-, and third-degree felonies (such as theft by unlawful taking, theft by deception, receiving stolen property, forgery, and tampering with public records/information) and 26 counts of first- and second-degree misdemeanors (including tampering with records and securing execution documents by deception).
The charges followed a months-long investigation by both the District Attorney’s Office and the forensic accounting firm of Marcum LLP, which was hired by Kennett Township in May 2019 to investigate the suspicious financial transactions which supervisors were alerted to the previous month.
The alleged embezzlement prompted the supervisors to, among other things, hire a new township manager, create a position for a finance and human relations director, and help overhaul township operations.
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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