Chicago PL Clerk Admits
Nickel-and-Dime Theft
A circulation clerk at Chicago Public Library’s downtown Harold Washington Library Center was arrested December 11 and charged with felony theft for taking $18,000 in fine money from July to November 2001. Doretha Welborne, who has worked at the library since 1981, was fired after signing a statement admitting to the theft.
CPL Commissioner Mary Dempsey said in the December 13 Chicago Sun-Times that after a discrepancy turned up in a December 2001 audit, the library requested a separate investigation by the city. Since then, fine collections are reconciled on a daily basis. “We changed the reporting mechanisms and the internal checks and balances to make it impossible to do this,” she added.
Inspector General Alexander Vroustouris will review the ledger books for the remainder of 2001 and all of 2002 to search for further disparities. “The brazen nature in which she was perpetrating this offense,” he said, “leads to the inescapable conclusion that, perhaps, this was going on for a longer period of time.”
Posted December 16, 2002.
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