A former county employee has been charged with stealing nearly $350,000.
York County government makes changes to guard against postage thefts
Earlier this month, a former York County assistant chief clerk was charged with stealing nearly $350,000 from the county through fraudulent postage refunds. The technique by which county officials are trying to prevent similar thefts is as old as accounting itself -- a second set of eyes.
"As soon as we heard about the issue, we started working on a new process," county Treasurer Barbara Bair said.
Vickie Glatfelter, who served with the county for 27 years, was dismissed in October over the allegations. Among her responsibilities, according to Bair, was collecting refunds for overpayments that the county made to the U.S. Postal Service.
Now, York County Administrator/Chief Clerk Chuck Noll compiles the information for any refunds that the Postal Service owes the county. He turns that information over to Bair's office, which actually handles the collections. Then Bair's office returns a receipt to Noll, verifying that the proper amount has been refunded.
As an added backup, County Controller Robb Green will periodically review the records to make sure that everything is being processed properly.
Noll said the need for going through that procedure should be infrequent under ordinary circumstances. He waits until a number of such errors pile up before putting in for the refund, because they tend to be for small amounts of money.
About two weeks ago, he put in the first refund request since Glatfelter's dismissal. It came to a little more than $400.
The fact that such small amounts of money are involved is precisely why it took so long for county officials to pick up on what was happening, Noll said.
The county marks the postage on its mail with 25 machines at district magistrate offices and every major facility throughout the county.
The county will pay the U.S. Postal Service for maybe $5,000 worth of postage on a machine. The machine then stamps the outgoing postage, deducting from that $5,000 the cost of each individual piece of mail. When the amount on the machine starts getting near the end, the county will renew it.
Occasionally, employees will make mistakes. They'll run an empty envelope through the machine. Or they'll process an envelope without resetting the machine after someone else set it to a higher rate for a package.
In those cases, the county would get the money refunded from the Postal Service, minus a 10 percent processing fee.
During a news conference earlier this month, county detectives said Glatfelter admitted to the thefts and provided a written statement about her actions. Glatfelter allegedly would intentionally run "bad" envelopes through the machines to make refunds necessary, according to charging documents. Then she would collect the refunds and deposit them in her personal account.
According to the district attorney's office, Glatfelter committed 808 such thefts between June 2003 and Sept. 28, 2010. Noll said dollar amounts were small enough and spread over enough departments that no department head noticed a spike in postal costs.
"There were no red flags," Noll said.
THE CASE
Name: Vickie Glatfelter, 49, of Dover Township
Former job: York County assistant chief clerk for 27 years
Charges: dealing in proceeds of unlawful activities, theft by unlawful taking or disposition, receiving stolen property and theft by failure to make required disposition of funds received, according to York County District Attorney Tom Kearney
Amount: Glatfelter is accused of stealing $347,477.23 over seven years.
What's next: Glatfelter waived her preliminary hearing, so her next court date, for formal arraignment, is set for Feb. 11.
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