Ronda Spencer[/caption]
A county employee was arrested last week for fraudulent use of a county credit card.
Ronda Spencer, 42, of Beaver Dam, was charged with one count of fraudulent use of a credit card over $500 and under $10,000 on Feb. 28. At the time of a press release from the Ohio Co. Sheriff’s Department on March 3, the amount of loss totaled $1,129.38
Spencer was hired as a full-time clerk in the Ohio Co. Treasurer’s Office on Jan. 20, 2013.
“We took applications for the job,” Judge-Executive David Johnston said. “She scored well on tests, and seemed like the right choice for the position.”
Johnston said that the county did a background check and a drug screen before hiring her, and everything checked out.
Spencer was arrested for shoplifting on Oct. 31, 2012, but this didn’t show up on the background check, Johnston said.
According to Johnston, Spencer’s job was to monitor county employee’s use of credit cards.
“If a county employee needed a credit card, they would get them from her,” Johnston said. “And when they returned the credit card, they were returned to her, and she would get the receipts for them.”
Spencer is the only county employee who could have been in a position to misuse a county credit card, Johnston said.
The county treasurer’s office found out about this through an audit performed within their offices to make sure their paperwork is accurate. Every couple of months, the three employees within the office switch up their bookkeeping, so that they can all check each other. It was through this checks and balances that Ohio County Treasurer Ann Melton found the discrepancies with the credit card receipts.
“I found it at the beginning of last week, and it took me about a week to check and re-check to make sure all of the information was correct,” Melton said. “I told the Judge-Executive on Thursday, and we contacted the Sheriff’s Department.”
At that point, Detective Tim Hatfield brought Spencer in, and she confessed to using the credit card allegedly for food purchases at Walmart and a camera at Best Buy.
“When we were sure, the whole thing took less than 24 hours to get her into custody,” Johnston said.