A County Park Had One Bookkeeper. $44,141 Went Missing.
Summary
For three years, one Steuben County, Indiana employee collected, billed, and receipted every dollar the county park department took in -- camping fees, dock rentals, event-center rentals -- with no one else checking whether it was all remitted for deposit. A state audit found $44,141.27 of that money never was, nearly three times the $15,000 bond the county carried on her position. The state separately billed her $35,049.33 for the cost of investigating it -- the county seeking back the missing collections, the state seeking back its investigation costs, together $79,190.60. The case has been referred to the Indiana Attorney General and the county prosecutor.
One job, eight duties, zero oversight
Sarah Smith was hired in November 2021 as the county's Park Assistant Superintendent and Event Center Coordinator. Per the SBOA's report, her job was to collect and receipt every fee the park took in, read electric meters and bill campers for usage, mail notices of amounts due, file small claims on delinquent accounts, keep the rental calendar, sign up renters for the Event Center and Lions Building, answer the phones, and help write the department's annual budget. No one else in the county reviewed her collections against the rental agreements or the calendar she herself kept. The SBOA's finding is blunt: the county had not built in segregation of duties -- the basic control where the person who takes the money isn't also the only person checking whether it all got where it was supposed to go.
How it surfaced
The gap came to light almost by accident. Preparing the department's 2024 profit-and-loss statement, Park Director Scott Schwartz and County Council member Christina Cress noticed park profits looked low for the rental activity they knew about. Comparing receipts to camper billing forms, they found cases where a form marked "paid in full" didn't match what the receipt book showed as received; two campers they contacted directly confirmed they'd paid the amount on the billing form. They reported it to the SBOA on November 12, 2024. When auditors interviewed Smith nine days later and showed her the mismatched paperwork, she said she "had no idea" and "it was just a mistake." She resigned on January 10, 2025, effective immediately.
View data as table
| 2022 | 4,126.1 | |
|---|---|---|
| 2023 | 17,076.3 | More than four times the 2022 total. |
| 2024 | 22,939 | The single worst year, and Smith's last full year in the job. |
Once auditors went looking, the shortfall didn't stay small. It grew every year Smith held the job: $4,126.05 undeposited in 2022, $17,076.25 in 2023, and $22,938.97 in 2024 -- more than five and a half times the first year's total. Of the three-year, $44,141.27 total, about 58% ($25,784.37) came from campground collections -- camping lots, electric usage, winter boat storage -- and the remaining 42% ($18,356.90) came from facility rentals and security deposits at the Lions Building and Event Center. Auditors documented duplicate receipts where the carbon-copy amount had been overwritten in ink with a lower figure: one, receipt No. 21587, shows a carbon impression of at least $400 received, changed to $100 with "Wrong Book electric" written over it -- and the $400 was never reported for deposit at all.
What the county's own rules required
Indiana law is specific on this point: under Indiana Code 5-13-6-1⧉, a local officer who collects public money must deposit it no later than the next business day (the only exception is when the cash on hand is $500 or less). The SBOA also found no ledger anywhere -- not with the County Auditor, not with Schwartz, not with Smith -- tracking who paid a security deposit, when, or whether it was ever returned or forfeited. The county's insurance did not anticipate a loss this size: it carried a $15,000 bond on Smith's position and $30,000 in crime insurance for the whole county government, for each year covered by the audit. The $15,000 bond would have covered barely a third (34%) of the $44,141.27 that went missing.
View data as table
| Remitted for deposit | 1,695,282.8 | 49 Reports of Collections filed with the County Auditor and Treasurer, 2022-2024. |
|---|---|---|
| Never deposited | 44,141.3 | About 2.5% of everything the department should have taken in over the same three years. |
What happens next
The SBOA's summary of charges asks Smith to reimburse the County $44,141.27 for the missing collections, and separately to reimburse the State of Indiana $35,049.33 for the cost of investigating the case -- interviewing park staff, a sheriff's officer, the county treasurer and auditor; checking 468 rental lots' worth of billing records across three years; and reviewing 1,022 individual receipts. Indiana Code 5-11-1-27⧉ requires the attorney general to seek that investigation-cost restitution whenever it pursues a civil case over misappropriated public funds -- which is why the combined amount sought from Smith, $79,190.60, runs more than five times the bond that was supposed to back her position. The report has been sent to the Indiana Attorney General's office and the Steuben County prosecutor. Schwartz's official response says the department has already put in place the controls the report found missing -- additional documentation, staff training, and same-day deposits of anything over $500, as the statute requires.
- One county employee held every financial duty for the park department -- collecting, billing, and receipting fees -- with no one else checking whether it was all remitted for deposit, and $44,141.27 went undeposited over three years before anyone noticed.
- The county's own insurance wouldn't have covered the loss. The $15,000 bond on the position covers about a third of the money that went missing; the combined amount sought from the former employee, once investigation costs are added under Indiana law, is more than five times the bond.
- The case now sits with the Indiana Attorney General and the Steuben County prosecutor, with $44,141.27 sought for the county and $35,049.33 for the state's investigation costs; the county says it has already added the deposit and documentation controls the report found absent.
All figures come from Indiana State Board of Accounts Report No. 25390I, a special investigation of the Steuben County Park Department covering January 1, 2022 through December 31, 2024, filed March 17, 2026. The report's transmittal letter is dated December 22, 2025 and its exit conference was held February 18, 2026; the filing stamp reflects when it was formally entered into the public record. The $44,141.27 and $1,695,282.83 figures are the audit's own stated totals, not estimates; the 2.5% share-of-intended-collections figure in this piece's underlying analysis is this outlet's own arithmetic (missing amount over missing-plus-remitted), offered as scale context, not a figure the audit itself states.
Sources(3) ▾
- Indiana State Board of Accounts (Paul D. Joyce, CPA, State Examiner), Special Investigation Report of Park Department, Steuben County, Indiana, January 1, 2022 to December 31, 2024 (Report No. 25390I) (2026-03-17) — The full 33-page special investigation report, fetched directly from the Indiana State Board of Accounts and read in full. Source for Sarah Smith's hire date and job duties; the November 2024 discovery of the discrepancies by Park Director Scott Schwartz and County Council member Christina Cress; the SBOA's interview of Smith; her January 2025 resignation; the $44,141.27 in collections not deposited (broken out by campground vs. facility rentals and by year 2022-2024); the $35,049.33 in special investigation costs and what they covered; the $79,190.60 total balance charged to Smith; the county's $15,000 bond coverage and $30,000 crime insurance coverage; the $1,695,282.83 in legitimate remittances across 49 Reports of Collections; the internal-controls findings; the altered-receipt examples; the security-deposit recordkeeping gap; Park Director Schwartz's official response; and the report's referral to the Indiana Attorney General and the local prosecuting attorney. audit.sboa.in.gov · original document
- Indiana General Assembly (via Justia's U.S. Law library), Indiana Code § 5-13-6-1 -- Procedure for Deposit of Public Funds (2025-01-01) — The current statutory text requiring local officers who collect public funds to deposit them not later than the next business day, with a narrow $500 on-hand exception -- the deposit-timeliness standard the SBOA report measures the Park Department's actual practice against, and the standard Park Director Schwartz cites in his official response as now being followed. law.justia.com · original document
- Indiana General Assembly (via Justia's U.S. Law library), Indiana Code § 5-11-1-27 -- Local Governmental Internal Controls; Personnel Training; Violations; Reporting Misappropriations (2025-01-01) — Subsection (m) is the statutory basis for the $35,049.33 special-investigation-cost charge added on top of the $44,141.27 in missing collections: when the attorney general brings a civil action over misappropriated public funds, the statute requires the attorney general to also seek restitution of the State Board of Accounts' investigation costs. law.justia.com · original document
Comments
Always open. Logged-in readers can annotate paragraphs in place.
One person ran the money side of Steuben County, Indiana's park department for three years -- collecting camping fees, billing electric usage, and taking event-center deposits, with no one else checking whether it all got remitted for deposit. A special investigation⧉ by the Indiana State Board of Accounts (SBOA), the state agency that audits every local government in Indiana, found $44,141.27 in park collections from 2022 through 2024 never made it to the county's bank accounts.