Manager Accused Of Stealing From Patient Head Of Monarch House Fired By Board For Allegedly Taking $400 From Retarded Resident
The manager of the Monarch House, a home for mentally retarded adults, has been fired for allegedly stealing $400 from one of the residents.
Susie Munson was ousted last week by the board of directors for Panhandle Special Needs, a non-profit agency that runs the Monarch House.
“There were some funds missing and we voted to remove her and all the personnel records so we can check everything out,” said board chairman Dale Spencer.
Munson apparently wrote a $400 check out of one resident’s bank account and cashed it for herself. A note on the check said the money was for the resident to buy clothes and gifts.
Another worker discovered the money missing from the mentally disabled man’s account and noticed he had no new clothes or other recent purchases.
The worker reported the incident to the Bureau of Facility Standards, a branch of the Department of Health and Welfare in Boise. The state is now investigating Munson and the Monarch House.
“We did get a complaint and we are investigating it, but I’m not at liberty to divulge much more than that,” said bureau chief John Hathaway.
The state informed Panhandle Special Needs officials about the complaint last week.
The board then confronted Munson about the missing money and launched its own investigation.
“We are going through the records to make sure everything else is on the up and up. We don’t have any reason to believe other funds are missing,” said Spencer.
“We are following our bylaws and guidelines and taking care of it.”
Spencer said Munson apparently planned to borrow the money and pay it back. Munson could not be reached for comment, but Spencer said she has since repaid the money.
The Monarch House has nine mentally disabled residents. It’s a place where they learn to live independently. Panhandle Special Needs serves about 50 mentally disabled people in the county, helping them find jobs and teaching them life skills.
Munson was the services manager at the house. She had access to residents’ accounts and helped them manage their money and take care of Medicare payments and bills.
“We are looking at ways to tighten up the procedures and make this work a little better,” Spencer said. “We have been in business over 20 years and our record has been good, but you are bound to run into things like this.”
This is the second time in less than a year that Panhandle Special Needs has come under scrutiny.
The current director, Susan Ohman, was convicted in August for misuse of federal funds while she was head of a similar agency in Idaho Falls.
The conviction stemmed from a two-year FBI investigation and occurred about a month after she was hired for the Sandpoint job.
Panhandle Special Needs board members said they knew Ohman was having legal problems when they hired her, but said her past troubles did not overshadow her “excellent” work for the agency.
, DataTimes