Women and Embezzelment

Another woman, Rita Crundwell, has been accused,  and  if proven guilty,  may join  the ranks  of other women embezzlers.  This time the numbers were big and Harriet Walker's 48M dollar  filching title may have some serious competition.

Rita, the Dixon Illinois  city comptroller-a job she has held since the 80's, took it over the top with her 30M dollar swipe.   The scam  recently  hit the wall when  another person filled in for her while she took vacation time, four months to be exact.  What the hell?   Four months vacation time is pretty extravagant for a town of 16,000.  And the poor town,  possibly scammed  by this villain,  has an annual operating budget of 8-9 million.   One article stated employees went without raises for three years and the town's side walks were falling apart.  Not so at the Meri J Ranch.

Ms. Crundwell has an extremely  successful horse breeding business, the Meri J.  Over the years there were questions asked: why would she keep her measly (not by my standards) eighty thousand a year job when her horse business was so lucrative?  The little voice in her head must have said: "don't quit your day job, don't quit your day job!"

I tried to get on her website for her business, possibly funded by Dixon, but they said to check back later, site unavailable. Hmm....

Rita in her glory days

Leaving the courthouse yesterday, looking less glamourous I would say.

I don't understand, which is frequent,  why do women seem to be the favored gender with  sticky fingers and then get caught?

I have some unproven theories:

• Tempted by never having enough  money.
• They are forever trying to balance some budget: personal or employment. 
• Women are good at doing what needs to be done, "somehow the money will show up."
• They become careless at covering their tracks.
• Men manage to stay out of the courts and/or newspapers. Their problems are fixed with the help of the good old boy network. 
• Gambling.

In North Dakota alone, over recent years,  we have had a fair number of women with their mitts in the cookie jar: insurance agents, treasurers of local organization  and churches (how could they??), bookkeepers, school secretaries, city auditors.  And then, with our nice North Dakota  polite ways, these Matoff wannabes  never seem to go big with zeros.  No, they  screw up their lives up forever over  a few thousand dollars.  Large dollar amounts  of female embezzlement in ND are few.

Now Rita, she went big.  Living Large.

But I suppose, like everything in this state where it takes us a few years to catch up, that too will change.