Years ago I had a friend who would periodically blurt out, “They have the wrong people in charge!” I had reason to think of him this week when Judith Oakes, the one time accountant for the Rialto Unified School District who stole either $1.8 million or $3 million – no one seems to know for sure – was finally sentenced for her misdeeds…
As I understand it, Judith Oakes went to work for the school district in the late 1990s and was given a position of some trust and responsibility, overseeing the district’s school lunch program, counting the money and depositing it. Video cameras had been installed in the counting room but had not been operating for many years…
Sometime in the late spring or early summer of 2013, someone became suspicious and, apparently without the knowledge of the district superintendent or Judith Oakes, the video cameras were repaired, including one that was placed directly over the counting station Judith Oakes utilized. Just after the 2013-14 school year began, on August 5 and August 6, she was was caught on camera slipping handfuls of bound bills into her bodice…
She was arrested the following day and resigned thereafter. She initially maintained her innocence in the face of the charges against her. The superintendent and assistant superintendent were placed on paid leave the following month and the superintendent chose to resign seven months later…
The inference I have drawn is that it was the district’s assistant superintendent for financial affairs, a fellow by the name of Mohammed Islam, who had discovered the pilfering. Mohammed Islam had previously served as the financial services director with the San Bernardino City Unified School District before coming to Rialto in the 2012-13 school year. I draw this inference because it was Mohammed Islam who was immediately elevated to the position of acting superintendent when the superintendent and acting superintendent were placed on leave…
Indeed, it was the hiring of Mohammed Islam and is promotion that appears to be the only thing the Rialto Unified School District did right during this entire debacle…
When the district, the investigator it hired and the police department requisitioned district records pertaining to Oakes, they were missing. It seems the precaution Mohammed Islam had taken in seeing to it that the video system was returned to operational status without alerting anyone at the district’s administrative level was a wise one…
The district then moved to fire its auditing firm, Vavrinek, Trine and Day, a not unreasonable development. A new firm was brought in, which ascertained that in the five year period before she was caught and resigned, Judith Oakes had embezzled $1,845,137.81. How it was that she had taken the 81 cents in change on top of the paper cash was never explained, at least to my satisfaction. The exactitude of that finding was not replicated in the other forensic examination of her perfidy. Rather an estimate of over $3 million was given with regard to the total amount of money she had taken out of the fund intended to provide food for the mouths of hungry students, beginning in either 1999 or 2000…
I happen to know that if the district had wanted to do so, it could have insisted on a much more accurate accounting. And achieving a more exact number would have been worthwhile. Judith Oakes was married to Jack Oakes, a former principal of Ramona-Allesandro Elementary School in San Bernardino, who died as the result of injuries he sustained in an off-road accident in 2010. That Jack Oakes did not have an inkling about what his wife was up to strains credulity. What implication does this have for the San Bernardino City Unified School District?
Oakes at last bowed to the inevitable and entered a guilty plea on December 4, short of going to trial. She has spent the last 17 months in jail and came before Judge Colin J. Bilash, a former deputy district attorney, for sentencing on Thursday…
At that sentencing hearing, Rialto Unified School District Associate Superintendent Tom Haldorsen stated that $3 million in district funds are indeed unaccounted for since 2001 and that it is a logical assumption Oakes is the party responsible for that money’s disappearance. Needs no ghost come from the grave, My Lord, to tell us this…
Judge Bilash made a determination that she merited a sentence of five years, given that eight of the other charges against her had been dropped as a consequence of last month’s plea deal in which she acknowledged stealing the $1.8 million. Judge Bilash further sentenced her to make $1.8 million in restitution payments. The catch? Officers of the law have apparently scoured, to the extent they can, her known bank accounts and other holdings. This apparently entailed some level of cooperation from her, but it is unknown, at least to this observer, how complete that cooperation has been. What is known is that within the last fortnight she has disgorged $339,002.08, culled from her accounts and holdings. What I do not know, and what I suspect no one knows other than Judith Oakes, is what she has hidden and where it is hidden. Does she have accounts in her own or a different name in any banks or institutions? Does she have a security deposit box? How many? Where are they? What investments has she made?
Under the terms of what Judge Bilash set down for her, Judith Oakes will be on probation of three years after she leaves incarceration. With time served and credit for good behavior, she could be released as early as July of 2017. If that is the case, she will be 52 years old when she is released. I wish I was 52 again…
Judge Bilash’s restitution order further requires that she begin paying down on the $1,460,997.92 she still owes, starting within 60 days of leaving custody, at no less than $150 per month. If she stays current on her suit, she will have paid back her debt to society in full in the year A.D. 2853. That does not include interest…
Like my friend said, “They have the wrong people in charge!” Well, except for Mohammed Islam. The Rialto Unified School District still refers to him as the “interim” superintendent. Let me go on record as saying they should drop the “interim” from his title…