For years, Ginger Neuhart, the village of Alvo’s clerk/treasurer, came to the monthly board meetings with a stack of checks for the village’s business.
The payroll checks, including her own, were filled out in her loopy scrawl, all awaiting Board Chairman Ryan Anderson’s signature.
It wasn’t until September — after reaching out to the state auditor in August — that Anderson learned why the loopy letters spelling out “seven hundred” on Neuhart’s payroll check were spaced so far to the right of the check. When the check was processed by the bank two days after the meeting, the words “one thousand” had been squeezed in front of the “seven hundred.”
“She’d gotten away with it for years,” Anderson said by phone on Wednesday from Alvo, a village in Cass County of about 150 people. “It’s a small town and you trust everybody. I trusted her.”
Neuhart received $105,000 in overpayments over seven years, according to the state auditor’s examination of all checks made out to her by the village of Alvo. She has been charged with felony theft by deception and was scheduled to appear in court for a preliminary hearing in Cass County Thursday morning.
According to an affidavit, on Sept. 11, Neuhart told a Nebraska State Patrol investigator that she had altered her Alvo checks monthly, adding $1,000 and sometimes $2,000 to her own paychecks after Anderson had already signed them. Neuhart was also the clerk/treasurer for the villages of Ithaca and Memphis and the city of Waverly. The state’s Auditor of Public Accounts has requested financial information and bank statements from the other three municipalities.
Neuhart, 60, of Waverly, could not be reached for comment Wednesday.
In Nebraska, the filing of a felony complaint charging embezzlement carries a statute of limitations of three years.
Bank records for the last three years show $39,000 in unauthorized funds by altered payroll checks to Neuhart from Alvo, the affidavit said.
Anderson said he’s glad the fraud has stopped, but now the village is left to “figure it out.”
“Everyone — the auditor, the State Patrol — they do their job, but there’s not really any help for Alvo to get that money back,” Anderson said, adding that the village would have to file a civil suit for funds embezzled before 2014.
Anderson expects the village to be “back in good financial shape” in six years.
“It’s a mess now,” Anderson said. “It’s overwhelming.”
State auditor alleges woman accused of embezzling from Alvo, also took thousands from Memphis, Nebraska
About 20 miles north of Alvo, Nebraska, where officials say Ginger Neuhart embezzled more than $100,000, Neuhart pulled off the same scam, the Nebraska state auditor alleges.
A letter from the auditor’s office to the Village of Memphis, which details more than $160,000 in overpayments since 2005, comes just a day after the auditor sent a similar notice to the Village of Alvo detailing the extent of what officials said was Neuhart’s scheme.
Both letters describe the same situation: In her role of clerk/treasurer for the villages, Neuhart wrote out her own payroll checks, adding either $1,000 or $2,000 to her own paychecks after they were signed by the village chairperson.
Neuhart also served as clerk/treasurer in Ithaca, Nebraska.
In September, Neuhart told a Nebraska State Patrol investigator that for years, she had been altering her paychecks from the three villages. She said she had to do so because she thought her services were worth more.
Neuhart, 60, lives in Waverly. A woman who answered her home phone Thursday afternoon hung up on a reporter.
Neuhart has been charged with felony theft by deception in Cass County in connection with the funds taken from Alvo. In Nebraska, the filing of a felony complaint charging embezzlement carries a statute of limitations of three years.
Bank records for the last three years show $39,000 in unauthorized funds by altered payroll checks to Neuhart from Alvo, according to an affidavit.
In the letter to Memphis, the state auditor wrote that Neuhart received $37,500 in overpayments in the last three years.
Memphis is about 33 miles southwest of Omaha.
