ST. PAUL, Minn. (AP) - A woman who provides free Thanksgiving meals to people in the Twin Cities and western Wisconsin has been charged with felony theft from her former workplace.
Tracy Turner, 40, is accused of embezzling funds from a title company where she used to work in St. Croix County, Wisconsin, according to the St. Paul Pioneer Press reported (https://bit.ly/1zCwkwl ). According to a criminal complaint, an audit revealed about $27,000 missing from the Hudson branch of All American Title. Investigators allege more than $12,000 was traced to Turner’s home mortgage account.
Turner, who lives in Somerset, Wisconsin, says she is confident they’ll be dismissed.
“I managed the title company and my name was on everything,” Turner said. “So when they started doing audits, of course my name is on everything. … Of course they’re going to hunt me first.”
Turner said there were questionable processes for finalizing policies at the office, which are at the root of the audit and s partly why she quit in 2013. She also said the accusations that money was deposited into her personal accounts is not true.
“If I make a home mortgage payment, it goes through the exact same service,” she said.
The questionable transactions occurred in 2010 and 2011 but weren’t flagged until 2012, when a customer called the title company and complained that a refund check for escrowed taxes never arrived, the complaint said. The company owner told police he discovered “there were approximately 10 occasions at the Hudson branch in the past two years that refunds had not been sent where they should have.” The owner then hired an outside firm to perform an audit.
Turner first began making and delivering free Thanksgiving meals to people in need in 2007. She formed her nonprofit organization Unseen Angels in 2009 for the effort, and she and a crew of volunteers served a record 10,352 people in 2013. Turner is taking this year off because of health problems, she said.
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Information from: St. Paul Pioneer Press, https://www.twincities.com
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