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	St. Joseph Bookkeeper Admits Stealing over $500,000 By Jim Nichols Plain Dealer [Cleveland] May 16, 2007 http://www.cleveland.com/cuyahoga/plaindealer/index.ssf?/base/cuyahoga/1179304438106960.xml&coll=2 An employee of St. Joseph Academy, the private Catholic school for girls on Cleveland's West Side, admitted to stealing more than half a million dollars from a fund-raising account over several years, a Cuyahoga County prosecutor's office spokesman said Tuesday. Defendant Colleen Kempf, 46, of Olmsted Township, is an alumna of the school and the mother of three girls who also attended, said school President Mary Ann Corrigan-Davis. "We really do feel a sense of betrayal," Corrigan-Davis said in a telephone interview. "So many of our parents sacrifice so much. People scrimp and save to send their kids here, and that's why this hurts so much." Kempf was a bookkeeper in the school's finance department. She fudged ledgers to conceal a host of thefts, said Ryan Miday, spokesman for County Prosecutor Bill Mason. Kempf is free on $5,000 bond; she could not be reached for comment Tuesday. She agreed to waive the grand-jury process and admitted Monday to an aggravated-theft charge. She will enter a formal guilty plea at an as-yet unscheduled hearing before Common Pleas Judge Michael Russo, who can impose a sentence ranging from probation to eight years in prison. Corrigan-Davis said she hasn't considered whether the school will take a position on appropriate sentencing. The top priority is recovering the money through restitution, she said. The revenues came from the sale of gift cards redeemable at a wide variety of stores. The school purchases the cards in various denominations at a discount and makes money by selling them at face value, Corrigan-Davis said. The school's finance director found irregularities in the account last fall and the administration called in fraud investigators and police, the president said. By St. Joseph's count, the loss totaled $525,000 over six years. The school has filed an insurance claim and hopes to recover some or all of that amount, Corrigan-Davis said. The loss didn't cause any cuts to school programming. "It was, in a sense, money we didn't know we should have had," Corrigan-Davis said. To reach this Plain Dealer reporter: jnichols@plaind.com, 216-999-4111
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