Missing money repaid: Fire department funds had been used to pay personal bills

Originally published in the Texarkana Gazette and on writeforarkansas.org on July 26, 2011.

Money missing from a local volunteer fire department for more than a year recently was repaid.

Bank statements obtained from the Pleasant Hill Volunteer Fire Department in Miller County show that $1,600 in donations was used to pay personal bills in February and March 2010. A $400 payment was made to Sears, two payments totaling $900 to Capital One Bank and two payments totaling $300 to First Premier Bank.

Pleasant Hill is one of nine member stations of Miller County Rural Volunteer Fire Department, each of which maintains its own bank accounts. Pleasant Hill and several other stations keep separate accounts for sales tax and donation money.

Pleasant Hill Chief Chuck Phillips said the payments were an honest mistake by Virginia Rouse, the station’s treasurer at the time.

Contacted at her home near Doddridge in May, Rouse said she mistakenly selected the Pleasant Hill account, rather than her personal account, when she logged on to Wells Fargo online banking to pay her bills. She and Phillips said they were unaware that the money had been paid from the donation account until earlier this year, when another firefighter raised questions about the expenditures.

“If Carl Nelson hadn’t been sticking his nose where it didn’t belong, we wouldn’t have found out about it,” Phillips said.

Nelson, assistant chief of Genoa VFD and a member of Pleasant Hill, said he became suspicious about the department’s donation account when he was told that it contained a balance of just $80.12.

Further examination of bank records showed the payments to Sears, Capital One and First Premier Bank.

“That all looked like some sort of fraud to me,” Nelson said.

Nelson said he was also concerned by a $3,011 check drawn on Pleasant Hill’s account that bounced twice in March 2010 before enough money was deposited for it to go through.

The payment, as well as an additional $785 drawn on the account in March, was made to Auto Xpressions, Phillips’ detail shop on New Boston Road. The payment was for a lift kit and wench mount on an emergency vehicle recently purchased by Pleasant Hill.

The upgrades were covered by the department’s share of county sales tax funding. However, Phillips said they were paid through his donation account, because Pleasant HIll’s tax account was being audited by Miller County Rural VFD recorder/treasurer Sue Green.

Phillips said his business had a “lot of money tied up in” the EMS truck and needed the payments immediately.

“I had to replenish my (Auto Xpressions) account,” Phillips said. “I couldn’t wait 30 days.”

Nelson said he took the bank records to members of the Miller County Rural’s governing board and then to law enforcement, at which point Phillips said he was made aware of the missing funds.

“I’m a real good manager … but I’m a terrible bookkeeper,” Phillips said.

Phillips and Rouse both say she repaid the $1,600 in May. Phillips said he has been out of town on business for several weeks and unable to access the department’s bank records.

He said he would provide the Gazette with a copy of the records showing the repayment Monday.