SPRINGFIELD – A former city employee is slated to appear in federal court on Wednesday, Dec. 19, 1012 to answer to a charge of embezzling $110,000 from the Westfield City Collector’s Office.
Susan Duffy, who was employed by the city under her married name of Susan Hall, was dismissed from municipal employment shortly after the alleged embezzlement was discovered in early 2011. Duffy was named in a complaint filed Thursday in U.S. District Court in Springfield by U.S. Attorney Paul H. Smyth and will appear before Judge Michael A. Ponsor. She will be represented by Attorney Thomas A. Kokonowski of the Antonucci & Associates law firm of Springfield.
Duffy was hired in 2005 as part of the clerical staff and was on vacation in January of 2011 when another clerk discovered an ‘irregularity’ in the department’s accounts receivable. That employee reported the irregularity to Michael McMahon, the City Collector, who requested an internal audit by the City Auditor Deborah Strycharz. That investigation confirmed that there was a a discrepancy in the department’s accounts. The city requested its independent auditor, Thomas Scanlon of Scanlon & Associates, to conduct a second audit which confirmed that city funds were missing. The Scanlon audit traced the missing funds as far back as December of 2008 and moved to preserve documents involved in the criminal investigation. The investigation was then turned over to the Westfield Police Department detective bureau for further investigation in February of 2011.
Following the bureau’s investigation the case was sent to the Hampden District Attorney for prosecution. Mayor Daniel M. Knapik said on April 1, 2011 that the investigation has been ongoing for several weeks at that time. “A discrepancy was discovered through our internal system, and an outside auditor was brought in to further investigate the issue,” Knapik said in 2011. “The result of that audit raised the level of the incident from a simple accounting error to something more sinister.”
The District Attorney found that it was a federal case because it involved wire fraud, a violation of interstate commerce laws, since the bank from which the funds were taken is located in Atlanta. The District Attorney referred the case to U.S. District court and federal agencies, including the Internal Revenue Service and Federal Bureau of Investigation, continued the investigation.
Duffy, is charged with fiduciary malfeasance, including theft from the City of Westfield which receives federal funding and other benefits, and filing false tax returns because she failed to report those stolen funds. Local officials, including Mayor Daniel M. Knapik, and police officers involved in the investigation refused to comment on the case Thursday until Duffy is arraigned in federal court next Wednesday.
“I’ll answer anything you ask when I’m standing on the federal courthouse steps after she appears in court,” Knapik said Thursday. The city is seeking restitution as part of any plea agreement reached in federal court
