Boston - A former Saugus Public Library employee has been indicted by a federal grand jury on charges of stealing $800,000 from the library, money she allegedly used to pay bills, to fund work on her home, and to splurge on jewelry, flowers, and hotel stays. Linda E. Duffy, 65, a part-time administrative assistant who became a permanent employee at the library in 2004, was indicted on four counts of mail fraud, 10 counts of money laundering, and one count of aggravated identity theft, the US Attorney’s office said today. The indictment states that starting in 2004, and continuing until she resigned in July 2011, Duffy allegedly drained funds from a bank account at Eastern Bank that she had set up in the name of the Saugus Public Library.“We could have used the funds that were allegedly misappropriated. ... This is a real breach of the public’s trust,” he said. The charitable donations diverted to Duffy’s account included checks for about $143,535 from a family estate, prosecutors said. The GE Foundation, which matched donations to the library from current or former General Electric employees, was also bilked of a total of $450,000, according to the indictment.
Sick town, Saugus. When your librarian is bilking your town, and a Fortune 500 company, right under your nose for almost 8 years, you've got some serious problems...Probably start in the Accounting/Controller/Town Auditors office, because they clearly just ignored the library for quite some years. Then I'd look at this womans co-workers, I mean is this a common thing? Librarians living the life of luxury? I know they've got a mean business model making like a nickel a day on overdue books, and that would add up, if people read books from the library anymore. I'm guaranteeing I find more nickels on the street on a daily basis than the library makes in fees. I'm also guaranteeing that if my man Bookman up there was on the case, this would have been snuffed out at the start.
And none of this is to suggest that Linda Duffy isn't to blame, these are her actions and her actions alone it looks like. It's just, she's a librarian, not some Criminal Minds case study. She wasn't even all that clever, just moving funds from the Library's bank account to her's and then giving it out and buying shit. How was this not caught? That's all I want to know. You can just pay yourself from the city of Saugus' bank accounts and no one notices?
