Friends of Glenbow School Education Society (FOG) will decide whether it will proceed with an internal investigation after a former board member filed a complaint with the RCMP stating her signature was fraudulently used.
Friends of Glenbow School Education Society (FOG) will decide whether it will proceed with an internal investigation after a former board member
filed a complaint with the RCMP stating her signature was fraudulently used.
Sandi Hennig said her signature was forged on three separate cheques for the amounts of $2,500, $1,750 and $700, respectively.
FOG is a registered charity and raises funds for Glenbow School. Hennig, who had sat as an executive member as both chair and vice-chair, said the cheques that were written not only contained her signature without her knowledge, but the funds were not voted on by the group either - part of the charity's policy.
“All things have to be voted on. All expenses, all money forwarded, all money spent, events, everything needs to be voted on by the group, ” Hennig said, adding the cheques did not have a memo attached to note its purpose.
“There's a whole new executive (this year) and my name should have been taken off that account after Sept. 27 when they had a new meeting to elect new members. I've got it in the minutes that they were going to take names off. My name wasn't taken off the account until February this year, ” Hennig said.
The cheques were dated for October, but Hennig only recently made the discovery when other members of the group questioned the reported amount of money raised during the committee's fall card box fundraiser.
Sarah Evans, a current FOG member, said the group purchased more than 600 card boxes from BigBox Fundraising Inc. and had sold them all. Each box was sold at $33 each. Through the sales agreement, BigBox Fundraising Inc. received $22 and FOG received $11. She said that means FOG should have raised close to $8,000.
However, the number presented to FOG was less than $4,000, prompting Evans and other members to investigate further.
“I was trying to figure out how the card box fundraiser this time raised under $3,000 and in the summer we had raised $8,000 or something. So that's how it started, ” Evans said.
When the group obtained a copy of FOG's bank statements, it was discovered that multiple cheques were written out to the same member in varying amounts, some with Hennig's forged signature, and some with unknown signatures.
According to FOG's bank statements between September 2017 and January 2018 $8,621.88 worth of cheques were written. Of that amount, $5,737.45 was claimed to be signed with fraudulent signatures and $852.95 was claimed to have been for “unvoted on amount. ”
There were two cheques made out to Rocky View Schools during that time, one for $4,000 on Oct. 31, 2018 and the other for $250 on Nov. 24, 2018.
A formal complaint was filed to the Cochrane RCMP by Hennig on Feb. 14.
Late Wednesday afternoon, the RCMP confirmed they had closed the investigation, which Keith Chartier, acting chair of FOG, stated Tuesday they were co-operating with. He added, the society will now decide if it will proceed with its own investigation, which the board would have to vote on.
Angela Spanier, director of communications with Rocky View Schools, said school fundraising groups do not fall under the purview of the division, but expressed concern with the investigation.
“The matter is really in the hands of the RCMP and the Friends of Glenbow School Education Society. If the allegations are found to be true by the RCMP, I would add that RVS is disappointed that monies designated for educational programming for Glenbow students have been misappropriated, ” she said.
