Gloucester Banks On Vigilance
Gloucester beach-goers have been very ill-used of late, if you ask The Teller. They’d surely toss up their flip-flops in horror if they knew that their beach parking fees had gone into the pockets of a thief – or thieves. Yet for much of the summer, this appears to have been the case.
But, not to fret. City officials are on top of things.
Here’s the situation: Roughly $5,000 in 4th of July beach parking fees that should have shown up on the city’s TD Bank statement – you guessed it – did not make it there. Officials looked into whether a city employee was skimming the money before it got to the bank, said Jeffrey Towne, Gloucester’s treasurer, but an investigation turned up nothing nefarious. So they turned to … (dum dum DUM!) the bank itself.
In what law enforcement officials are referring to as a "sting" operation, city officials dropped a carefully counted and monitored amount into TD Bank, and watched as a different, presumably smaller, amount appeared in the bank’s records.
Aha! From that, it does appear that TD Bank has a thief in its midst. Joe Kleinberg, a security expert with Boston Private Bank and source for Banker & Tradesman, says it’s still possible that someone from the city could be in cahoots with the bank, but that it seems likely someone at the bank just took some money from the pile and assumed the city wouldn’t notice.
That person or persons didn’t count on the keen eye of Towne, who says that the bank has been cooperating fully with the city and has undertaken its own investigation.
So we’re all waiting with bated breath to see how the bank’s investigators play this. And really, how will they? Will they quietly fire the person or persons, provided they actually catch somebody? Will they publicly out the thief? Will they find nothing, thereby creating a "not it!" back-and-forth situation between themselves and the city? Stay tuned, banking fans!
On a more serious note… if some thief just assumed the city wouldn’t notice missing money, The Teller is glad he or she was wrong. It’s good to see that somebody’s paying attention, even if it is over the comparatively small $5,000 in cash. In times like these, every dollar matters.
Kleinberg added that all entities that deal in cash have to be particularly vigilant, and watch their bank accounts sharply. Like the last slice of pizza hanging out in the break room when nobody’s watching, a pile of 20s can make a tempting, easy target.
