By Dan Trudeau
A former employee of the Floral Park Village Library has been charged with grand larceny and forgery after accounting reviews revealed she had been secretly taking money from library accounts for nearly eight years, the Nassau county district attorney said.
District Attorney Denis Dillon said last week that library secretary and Floral Park resident Carol Krohn, 53, pilfered $77,525 from accounts to which she had access between 1995 and 2003.
Krohn allegedly took the money from the library’s video rental account, which she was mostly responsible for maintaining, by pocketing portions of daily revenue generated by rental fees and late fines and depositing a smaller amount in the bank at the end of the day, according to a criminal complaint filed with Dillon’s office.
Krohn has been charged by the Nassau County DA’s office with falsifying business records in the first degree, second-degree forgery and second-degree grand larceny.
She was trusted with the task of recording daily revenue for the video account in a business ledger the library used for keeping track of financial developments on a day-by-day basis, the complaint said.
Floral Park Village Mayor Ann Corbett said in a prepared statement that the video account was one of two library accounts that was not subjected to a yearly audit because of special rights enjoyed by libraries under New York state law. She said the incident will bring about a procedural change for the library.
“The current situation has warranted implementation of procedures to reassign authority over such accounts to appropriate personnel with the appropriate oversight,” Corbett said.
Library officials first suspected a possible theft in June when they discovered a separate account consisting of donated funds that was missing about $13,500, Corbett said.
The mayor said that Krohn admitted to taking the missing funds and resigned from her position on June 3. She promised to repay the $13,500 and did a short time later, Corbett added.
The first incident prompted a full review of the library’s other accounts, leading to the discovery of the missing money in the video account and Krohn’s arrest on July 7, Corbett said.
Krohn was arraigned on July 8 at the First District Court in Hempstead, according to police.
Apart from criminal charges against Krohn, the Village of Floral Park is seeking a $100,000 civil suit against the former secretary to recover the money she allegedly stole, Corbett said.
“The Floral Park Village board of trustees is employing every avenue to recover all unaccounted funds,” she said.
Reach Reporter Dan Trudeau by e-mail at Timesledger@aol.com, or call 718-229-0300, Ext. 173.
