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A gender-bender of a crime spree
It’s the picture that really gets you. The prim, proper woman gazing out from the pages of the newspaper looks like she could be your kindly grandmother.
She doesn’t seem like a crook. Or someone who police believe was slowly, methodically ripping off the company where she worked for 20 years for close to a million bucks.
That is the case being laid out against Elizabeth Greenawalt, the 66-year-old Thornbury woman who now faces charges that she was helping herself to the money at Environmental Equipment & Service Co. in Marcus Hook. The total of the missing money comes to a cool $925,000.
Greenawalt worked at the firm for more than 20 years and was considered a “trusted” employee.
We don’t know at this point what Greenawalt is alleged to have done with the money.
What I do know, or wonder about, is this. What is it suddenly with women sticking their hand into the till? It seems to be all the rage in the county. Greenawalt is just the latest in a string of high-profile cases in which authorities believe unsuspecting employers were fleeced by female employees.
There was the case out in Bethel, where their bookkeeper admitted ripping off more than $400,000 in tax funds.
There is an investigation underway in Thornbury, where the female treasurer was recently fired and an audit of the books is underway amid allegations of misappropriations.
Two different Delco schools also have been victimized.
In Ridley, the payroll coordinator is awaiting trial after she admitted helping herself to more than $570,000 over the last six years.
Down the road in Southeast Delco, $287,000 in lunch money disappeared. The woman who oversaw the program faces charges.
Even the courts have been hit. The former office manager of Folcroft District Court found herself on the other side of the law after a probe turned up $2,750 in parking tickets money disappeared. She’s now on house arrest.
Inevitably, we try to detail what the suspects did with the money. Sometimes it goes back to personal problems, like a gambling addiction.
It also inevitably leads to something else: Ruined lives.
She doesn’t seem like a crook. Or someone who police believe was slowly, methodically ripping off the company where she worked for 20 years for close to a million bucks.
That is the case being laid out against Elizabeth Greenawalt, the 66-year-old Thornbury woman who now faces charges that she was helping herself to the money at Environmental Equipment & Service Co. in Marcus Hook. The total of the missing money comes to a cool $925,000.
Greenawalt worked at the firm for more than 20 years and was considered a “trusted” employee.
We don’t know at this point what Greenawalt is alleged to have done with the money.
What I do know, or wonder about, is this. What is it suddenly with women sticking their hand into the till? It seems to be all the rage in the county. Greenawalt is just the latest in a string of high-profile cases in which authorities believe unsuspecting employers were fleeced by female employees.
There was the case out in Bethel, where their bookkeeper admitted ripping off more than $400,000 in tax funds.
There is an investigation underway in Thornbury, where the female treasurer was recently fired and an audit of the books is underway amid allegations of misappropriations.
Two different Delco schools also have been victimized.
In Ridley, the payroll coordinator is awaiting trial after she admitted helping herself to more than $570,000 over the last six years.
Down the road in Southeast Delco, $287,000 in lunch money disappeared. The woman who oversaw the program faces charges.
Even the courts have been hit. The former office manager of Folcroft District Court found herself on the other side of the law after a probe turned up $2,750 in parking tickets money disappeared. She’s now on house arrest.
Inevitably, we try to detail what the suspects did with the money. Sometimes it goes back to personal problems, like a gambling addiction.
It also inevitably leads to something else: Ruined lives.
posted by Heron's Nest at
7:37 AM
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