Attorney General Jackley Announces Indictment For $1.8 million Employee Theft from Child Protection Services

15 thoughts on “Attorney General Jackley Announces Indictment For $1.8 million Employee Theft from Child Protection Services”

1. One has to wonder what the point of the Board of Internal Controls is.

2. 1.8M over 13 years. WAY BACK in 2010: Obamacare wasn’t a thing yet, Toy Story 3 hit the box office, it was Rounds’ last year as governor, and Daugaard was elected governor. All this time later, we’re just now discovering this? Read Keloland’s story, Jackley said this was discovered when DSS did “some system checks and improvements”. And how’d she get away with it? A very complicated scheme of course, Carroll created a request, approved her own request, and then “DSS” – whatever that means – would approve her self-approved request and write the check. It sounds like they didn’t have any meaningful controls and now they got lucky. Who audits distributions? Who makes sure supervisors aren’t just writing checks to themselves? At what point did this hit $250K, $1M? For the sake of argument, let’s say she bought herself a couple meals at McDonalds, and then she stole the bulk of this money toward the end. OK, oversight like that may be understandable. But let’s do some quick math. $1.8M over 13 years is about $138,461 per year!!! That’s equivalent to the salary for 2-3 DSS employees…for 13 years…and DSS missed this?? While the AG is prosecuting this case, the legislature needs to prep some hard questions for the Secretary of DSS and his predecessors.

   1. This is why there’s bureaucracy.

3. She stole from abused kids for over a decade and this is the first we hear about it. Somebody has some damn explaining to do. This state’s governance is so, so corrupt at so many levels.

4. Not corrupt, necessarily. Incompetent, for sure. An ancient computer system no one understands and hasn’t for 30 years.A corrupt employee, most likely a compulsive gambler, can easily take advantage of this “broken system.”

5. This is unbelievable! Can any of this money be recovered. Several years ago in Minnesota an employee embezzled for several years, and when caught, had put the money in her kids names so evidently could not be recovered, spent a very short time in jail, got out, bought a farm and lives happily ever after. If this Carroll lost the money gambling, it will never be recovered either.

6. Shades of Rich Benda, Joop Bollen, and EB-5.

7. Another day another state employee stealing money. They seem to hire people for these higher positions that are donors or connected to the party. Perhaps they should consider qualification instead of party affiliation.

   1. So when was the last time there was a state employee that stole money? You say “another day, another state employee stealing money,” just curious when the last time something like this happened? Also, I know plenty of state employees who are not republicans. Just looking for some follow up and if you know something that rest of us haven’t heard about?

      1. Benda…Bollen…Eb5…gear up. Just a few in the last decade. Most of the people involved in gear up were taking salaries while working other full time jobs and nothing happened to them. Legalized theft thru public-private entities is the SD way.

   2. That’s really an ignorant and disingenuous comment. Don’t know if she was Republican, but I can tell you she was never involved in politics in Pierre. This person was not in a high office, and was in fact “a lifer” with the State of SD. Worked as a secretary at Dept of Ed before DSS – she’d basically hung on long enough to have been given more responsibility, and at some point, as opposed to the other 13,000 state employees who do their job, she took advantage.

      At 68 years old, since she’s fighting extradition, she’s probably going to fight it in court, so she probably won’t hit jail until she’s pushing up against turning 70. Given she was stealing from the program for foster kids, she may have to spend a stretch at the women’s prison. High likelihood she’ll die in jail.

      Since there’s little hope of recovering funds, as per Marty at the presser today, since she’s a retired state employee, if the legislature makes any changes, they could make it easier for the state to recoup theft by a state employee by having the ability to go after their state retirement.

      1. These agencies are run by donors or connected people. They are rarely qualified, and though we can’t define causality, there are many correlations to draw a conclusion. There is a lack of oversight from the agencies and a laissez faire attitude when it comes to handling the appropriated tax dollars as we have seen time and time again from what has come public. We can only imagine what never came public during past eras. We are seeing with the current national legislators that the message is morphing into that this okay, no rules against it, (Menendez, SCOTUS justices, Trump). I don’t blame the individual as much as leadership, which we should all be doing instead of turning a blind eye…..again….and again…….and again.

         1. Again, a disingenuous opinion. Most of the agencies are headed up by those with master’s degrees, if not doctorates, plus years of experience in their fields as well as considerable administrative experience. Those jobs are very public and high pressure.

            1. So a masters degree somehow makes them qualified? We want to run the state like a for-profit business, but only appoint political backgrounds to the position. Party allegiance > experience

8. Didn’t this happen before in another instance?

Comments are closed.