Ex-Staffer Allegedly Stole From 8 Disabled Clients Woman Was Handling Accounts For Lewiston Service Agency

A former employee of the Area Agency on Aging and Adult Services has been charged with three counts of grand theft in connection with money missing from the accounts of disabled clients.

Susan L. Butts, 37, who also has been a minister for Methodist churches in the area, is scheduled to appear in 2nd District Court on Aug. 13.

Butts is accused of writing checks on the individual accounts set up by the agency for clients who are developmentally disabled or born with Down syndrome and need assistance handling their money and paying their regular living expenses.

The program, set up by the Social Security Administration in 1991, allows an agency representative to deposit federal disability checks into each person’s account and then pay monthly bills and disburse an allowance to the individual.

Prosecutors allege that in the majority of the incidents, Butts would make out checks payable to “Cash” on the accounts, endorse and cash them herself and make entries into the check register and monthly financial report indicating the money had been deposited into nonexistent savings accounts.

The incidents occurred between March 1995 and February 1996, according to the complaint.

The first count alleges Butts wrote checks totaling $5,900 on one person’s account. The second count alleges $1,600 was taken in four checks from a juvenile enrolled in the payee program. The third count lists six people who allegedly lost a total of $2,868. One of the six apparently lost a total of $2,250 taken in three checks, according to the auditor’s report in the court file.

The checks to pay clients’ bills or other needs are supposed to have two signatures. Some copies in the court file have one; others have two.

Two Area Agency on Aging employees said they occasionally signed blank checks for Butts, assuming she would then use them to pay a bill for a client.

“I had no reason to assume Susan would misappropriate funds based on her position in the agency, her status in the community and being a minister,” Connie Granbois, now Community Action Food Bank manager, wrote in a letter to Area Agency on Aging director Jenny Zorens.

Robin Elliot, who replaced Butts as representative payee in February 1996, told police she first became aware of a problem when a parent of a client called in November 1996 to ask about a supposed savings account.

Elliot said Butts admitted taking the money from the first two accounts, saying she had problems with the Internal Revenue Service and had not paid taxes on money earned as a self-employed minister for four or five years, according to information in the court file.

Elliot delayed reporting the shortages to authorities for several months because Butts assured her the money would be repaid, the file says. Elliot went to Zorens after Butts announced she was leaving the agency to become director of the Retired Senior Volunteer Program, which serves north-central Idaho and Asotin and Garfield counties in southeastern Washington.

She left that job after less than a month.

Zorens said Wednesday the $7,500 for the first two accounts has been reimbursed.

“All of the clients will be made whole, whether by the individual who committed the crime or by the agency,” she said, and measures have been instituted to ensure similar problems do not occur again.