By Les Zaitz
The Oregonian
PORTLAND, Ore. — As thefts go, this one is pocket change.
For at least nine years, someone was filching quarters from storage lockers at Oregon State Correctional Institution in Salem.
The amount each month was in the $100 to $200 range, but auditors from the Oregon Department of Corrections say the thefts added up to an estimated $26,000 – 104,000 quarters.
No one can figure out what happened to the coins. State Corrections Department officials couldn’t explain why the thievery went undetected for so long.
The story starts at the entry to the prison, situated east of Salem and housing about 800 inmates. Visitors – 1,500 to 2,000 a month – enter the prison through a booth. They can check personal property into a locker, plunking in a quarter to stow their gear. They do so under the watchful eye of a corrections officer and a video surveillance system.
Superintendent Rob Persson, who took over in August 2011, said employees had no formal procedure for handling the coinage. He said by practice the money was to be removed monthly and turned in to Corrections Department headquarters a few miles away.
From at least October 2002 until February 2011, the money apparently never made it there.
Persson said over that period a “designated person” at the prison was supposed to process the cash.
“There is no record of who was designated,” Persson said.
And security for the key opening the locker coin boxes was lax.
“Anybody could have grabbed the key,” Persson said.
Corrections Department auditors discovered the theft this spring as part of a routine agency-wide audit into the Inmate Welfare Fund, a multi-million dollar account.
“We didn’t even know this was an issue until the audit,” Persson said.
Money for the Inmate Welfare Fund comes from vending machines such as OSCI’s lockers, inmate fines, and concession contracts. The account covers an array of prison costs, from bus tickets for departing inmates to prison cable television.
Auditors said in a report released recently to The Oregonian that even when the locker cash started showing up at DOC headquarters again, there were gaps. In one stretch in 2011, records show no locker coinage turned in four months in a row.
Persson surmised that prison employees who checked the lockers decided some months there weren’t enough coins to bother with and left the money. He said he put in tighter controls last June.
But the work of auditors, DOC’s internal investigators and subsequently the Oregon State Police couldn’t solve the mystery of who made off with the piggy bank material.
Persson pointed out the sum taken was relatively small, noting the Inmate Welfare Fund processed about $30 million over the years of thievery at OSCI.
“It was a couple hundred dollars here and there – not a big difference in the overall scheme of things,” Persson said.
Investigators initially suspected the theft was linked to another criminal investigation at OSCI. A Marion County grand jury is consider charges in an embezzlement out of the Inmate Welfare Fund by a former prison employee.
Corrections officials say the locker theft isn’t part of that case for lack of evidence. They otherwise would disclose no information about the embezzlement.
On Wednesday, the Marion County District Attorney’s Office confirmed it will consider criminal charges soon, and that the embezzlement involves an estimated $35,000.