Public Employee Racks Up $1,000 of FedEx Bills for Personal Use Under Township Account

NEWTOWN SQUARE–A  employee is currently being investigated for allegedly using the township's FedEx account to ship approximately $1,000 worth of items for personal use over a year and half time span.

A recent look at a FedEx bill for $888 by Supervisor Joseph Catania on Feb. 14 ensued the investigation of the incident.

"There are documents that are irrefutable," said Catania at the Board of Supervisors meeting Feb. 28, who pushed for further investigation outside the township. "It's been documented for over a year. The documents are clear to me. It's public money; it's public trust."

According to Catania, the employee allegedly sent out items on the township's FedEx account to the same destination on 24 separate occasions and an additional seven to eight more times to another location.

A motion was made by Catania to suspend the employee without pay and to investigate the incident from outside the township to pass along to the county's criminal investigation unit.

The motion saw a stalemate with Supervisor Dr. Ross Lambert voting with Catania while Chairman George Wood and Vice Chairwoman Linda Houldin voted against the motion. Supervisor Parris "Bob" Slawter was not present at the meeting to break the tie.

Wood, who agreed with Catania that an investigation was needed on the incident, disagreed that the employee should be suspended without pay.

"From what we know, and I'm just as concerned as you are," addressed Wood to Catania, "we should have so many eyes on this and this shouldn't happen again. It's wrongdoing."

Wood continued, "We need to discuss these things, and we really need to scrub it. Then we have to look at every computer and see...we should stop all of this. But at this point of time, I'm not ready to put somebody out there without pay. I'm not going to do that to an employee who has rights here. We can act swiftly enough so that the township is not being jeopardized in any fashion."

Another motion was made by Catania to suspend the employee with pay and to investigate the incident out of the township. The same votes were cast for this motion and received another tie as well.

Wood assured that the incident would be resolved by the next supervisors meeting.

"We're going to get to the bottom of it," said Wood. "We're going to conduct an interview with the individual and if we don't like their answers then we're going to do something about it."