BATON ROUGE – The woman in charge of processing payments for traffic citations in West Baton Rouge Parish was accused Thursday of embezzling more than $150,000 over the past five years.
A series of reports by the WBRZ Investigative Unit last year first exposed the allegations against Mandy Miller. The U.S. Attorney’s office released paperwork Thursday outlining how the purported scheme worked.
The documents say Miller falsified journal entries. As part of her job duties, Miller was responsible for receiving traffic ticket payments made in-person or by mail.
Rather than put the money in the parish bank account, the prosecutors said, Miller would divert money for her own use and cover her tracks by logging into parish accounting systems with similar but slightly different names. As “mandy” she would work in the ticket management system, but she would use “Mandy” with a capital M in the parish accounting system, the prosecutors said.
In a bill of information filed after Miller waived her right to grand jury proceedings, prosecutors alleged that on April 11, 2022, Miller working as “mandy” received $2,208 in cash payments but only deposited $400. For the entire month of April 2022, she listed receiving $19,928 in cash but only deposited $9,984, according to the court documents.
To cover her tracks, the prosecutors say, she used her “Mandy” account to falsely log the amount received from credit card payments and conceal a portion of the cash thefts.
A press release from the U.S. Department of Justice said the FBI, Louisiana Legislative Auditor, Investigative Audit Services, and the West Baton Rouge Sheriff’s Office were involved in the case.
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