The White County Central School District has increased its measures to prevent bank fraud after attempts were made to steal $42,000 from the district, according to Superintendent Pharis Smith.
Smith, who started his job with the district July 1, told the White County Central School Board on Tuesday that the fraud issue came up during his first week on the job, and that it was taken care of by the district’s bank.
“First Security has resolved any issues that we had with the check system, and we have set up a system and they have incurred all the cost on this,” Smith said.
“For those of you that don’t know, someone made a copy of a check and somebody in New York had our signatures on it, [former Superintendent] Mr. [Dean] Stanley’s and [former board President] Mr. [Larry] Stevens, and tried to cash it for $24,000 and another one for about $18,000.”
He said after that, “they got smart and started FedExing it to people in Searcy for $2,500, asking them to buy Walmart gift cards.”
“The bank has caught every one of them, and the district has not lost any money,” he said, adding that the district also has “set up ‘positive pay;’ it’s usually a $100 charge but [with] our relationship with First Security, they’ve waived that fee.”
He said the only thing the district has to do is send the bank “a check register of what we make checks out to and it reconciles with the bank on our e-finance. So all that is taken care of and we don’t have any worries on that part of the fraud anymore, so it shouldn’t happen again.”
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