A library employee allegedly stole from the district for years. How did nobody notice?
A former Poudre River Public Library District employee stole more than $110,000 from the district over five years by exploiting “deficiencies in the library’s procedures for the use and oversight of employees’ purchase card transactions,” according to arrest records.
Johanna Ulloa Girón was arrested June 11 after police say a 13-month investigation revealed she’d repeatedly dipped into the library’s coffers for personal purchases. The alleged purchases included clothes, toys, jewelry, electronics, food, airfare, furniture and much more, according to the affidavit for her arrest — everything from ballet tickets to a rose gold MacBook to an educational robot.
Police say the money for the alleged purchases came from the library’s budget for Outreach Services, a slate of programs supporting culturally diverse, underserved community members in outlying areas of the tax-funded library district.
Library District Director Diane Lapierre said it was “surprising” that the reported thefts went so long without detection. Lapierre became director in January, almost a year after the district started investigating Ulloa Girón’s spending. She said Ulloa Girón's alleged theft went on so long without detection because she was falsifying receipts.
“As soon as it did come to light, our Board of Trustees and our leadership team immediately updated a lot of our policies, procedures and training,” Lapierre said in an interview. “We believe (the new policies) would prevent individuals from taking advantage of our internal controls in the future.”
Catch up: Former Poudre River library employee charged with stealing $110K from district
“Johanna was in a position of trust in the organization,” she added. “She was a manager, and she had oversight over her budget and her programs. (As) an organization, our business model is based on trust that people take things out and bring them back.”
Ulloa Girón is a well-known advocate for social causes who won the city of Fort Collins' Human Relations in award in 2019. The award recognizes individuals who work to advance diversity, equity and inclusion. She's also co-founder of the BIPOC Alliance and most recently worked as advocacy program manager at the Colorado Trust, though the organization didn't respond to an inquiry about whether she is still employed there. She was a board member for the Health District of Northern Larimer County after being appointed in March 2021 and served until May.
But Ulloa Girón faced financial issues in her personal life and was sued by debt collectors five times between 2014 and 2016, court records show.
Oversight breakdown spurs changes at library district
Fort Collins Police Detective Allen Benbow wrote in the arrest affidavit that the library’s administrative investigation revealed “deficiencies in the library’s procedures for the use and oversight of employees’ purchase card transactions.” While employees were required to log their purchases in the district’s software and provide receipts, “managers of the employees believed the finance department was monitoring the purchases for unauthorized transactions, and the finance department believed the employees’ managers were reviewing them for unauthorized transactions,” the affidavit stated.
The library district's former finance director, Rachel Tand, made policy changes soon after the internal investigation of Ulloa Girón began in early 2021. Tand had taken on the finance position in 2019. She left that role voluntarily in late summer 2021.
The new procedures include a more rigorous annual auditing process, updates to the district’s purchasing and expense report review processes, re-educating staff about purchasing policy, and conducting random audits of staff expenses four times a year, Lapierre said. The district also created an Amazon business account and no longer allows employees to use their purchase cards on private Amazon accounts.
Lapierre took her position in January, after former Executive Director David Slivken announced in August that he planned to retire in November. She said she hadn’t received any indication that his departure was related to the investigation.
Ulloa Girón had worked at the library district at least since 2013, according to the affidavit, and became outreach services manager in 2016. She was authorized to use her purchase card for expenses tied to library programs like Imaginantes, which serves immigrant youth; book clubs and storytime events; an annual summer reading challenge; Dia de los Muertos and Las Posadas events; and Makerspace events related to science, technology, reading, arts and math education.
But library staff and police found that Ulloa Girón spent more on personal purchases between 2016 and 2020 than she did on actual program expenses, according to the affidavit. Police identified 1,267 purchases that they believed to be personal — almost 60% of the 2,224 purchases she made with the card during that period. Not including reimbursements Ulloa Girón had submitted for some personal purchases between 2017 and 2019, the personal purchases totaled $110,465, according to the affidavit.
As a point of comparison, the total budget for outreach services programming and program supplies between 2016 and 2020 combined was in the $120,000 range, based on a Coloradoan review of the district’s annual budgets. (The entire department budget was significantly larger but also included personnel costs and other categories.)
2021 audit revealed missing receipts
Library staff began investigating Ulloa Girón’s purchases in early 2021, after Tand conducted an audit of all 2020 purchase card transactions. Lapierre said she didn’t know whether that audit was routine.
Tand instructed all employees with missing receipts to turn them in by Jan. 20. Ulloa Girón got a two-week extension but was still missing receipts by Feb. 3, when she met with Tand for a second time, according to the affidavit. They talked about her progress locating the missing receipts and retrained her on using JD Edwards, a computer program where staffers can document and assign purchase card transactions to an expense account.
Library purchase cards had a spending limit of $5,000 a month, Lapierre said. Library employees at the time were supposed to log purchases in JD Edwards, describe the purpose of the transaction and upload a receipt. Ulloa Girón had been following that procedure from January 2016 to January 2017, according to the affid
But in February 2017, she started sending a spreadsheet to an accounting department employee with the date, amount, merchant name and description of each purchase. She submitted physical or digital copies of receipts to the accounting department. Human Resources Manager Sabrina Stromnes told police both practices were common at the library district.
On Feb. 5, 2021, Ulloa Girón met with Tand and her supervisor, Ken Draves, to go over the receipts and discuss purchases that appeared to be personal. One of those purchases was $360.31 at Rothy’s, a high-end shoe and handbag company. Ulloa Girón shared a confirmation email with no details about what was purchased. She labeled it “UW Back to School Bags” and included a second page reading “Back Pack Traveler, Qty: 20 $360.31.”
The next day, Ulloa Girón appeared to have sent an email addressed to “Deirdre at United Way,” an apparent reference to United Way of Larimer County President and CEO Deirdre Sullivan, according to the affidavit. “The backpacks from Rothys (sic) arrived and they are super cute!” the email read. “They look very durable. Want me to drop them off at your house or UW building? Let me know. We will add books to them as we discussed.”
But the message raised red flags: It was actually sent to Ulloa Girón’s personal email address, not to the United Way president. It was also sent more than six months after the purchase. And library staff said there was no reason the library district would’ve bought backpacks for United Way. (In addition, bags listed on the Rothy’s website range between $95 and $550, so it’s unlikely that Ulloa Girón would have been able to buy 20 backpacks at an average of $18 apiece.)
Library staff asked Rothy’s for the receipt associated with the purchase. It was for two pairs of shoes and rush shipping to Ulloa Girón’s home.
Stromnes opened an administrative investigation of Ulloa Girón on the day of the suspicious email. The library placed Ulloa Girón on paid administrative leave two days later. A few weeks later, Ulloa Girón and her attorney met with Stromnes and she agreed to reimburse the library for $9,822 for purchases made in 2020. She also resigned. She made the payment about a month later, on April 5.
Stromnes wasn’t done investigating. She took the case to police April 19. At that point, staff had started reviewing purchases prior to 2020 and realized older purchases were also suspicious, Lapierre said.
Stromnes ended up reviewing all of Ulloa Girón’s purchases between 2016 and 2020 with the help of one of Ulloa Girón’s staff members and Fort Collins police.
They reviewed each purchase and cross-referenced it with programs, calendars and other district documents. They searched Ulloa Girón’s email and office for receipts and purchase confirmations, some of which she’d said were missing, and found many receipts that were purportedly missing or appeared to have been altered. They also contacted businesses about suspicious purchases.
The affidavit includes more than 50 examples of the purchases police included in the “alleged personal” category. The items run the gamut: groceries, instant noodles and meals at Raising Cane's; string lights; a night-vision home security camera; Tarot cards; a cocktail shaker; dinosaur kid’s pajamas; a zebra print cat treehouse.
Here are some of the examples from the affidavit:
More than $3,400 at Amazon in December 2016 for five iPod shuffles, five iPads, a tripod, protective cases, protection plans, video games and parenting books. Staff said the iPods and iPads weren’t used at the library.
More than $1,840 at the Apple online store in August 2017 for a MacBook and accessories, which Ulloa Girón described as “new computer lab supplies.” The items weren’t purchased for library use, staff said.
More than $400 for three tickets to see the Colorado ballet perform “The Nutcracker” in 2017. Library staff suspected Ulloa Girón had altered a confirmation email to make it appear the purchase was for eight tickets to a Mariachi ballet performance for participants of the Imaginantes program. No such trip occurred, staff told police.
More than $760 for Uber and Lyft rides, clothing and other purchases while Ulloa Girón was on vacation in Mexico in 2019. She described some of the purchases as props for Dia de los Muertos altars and books for the Imaginantes program.
About $975 at Barnes & Noble in 2017 for toys, markers, crayon art, Legos, a night light, music, a puzzle, a virtual reality headset, jewelry and an educational robot.
About $530 at Walmart in 2020 for Legos, pans, food, toys, easels, chalk, gloves, stickers and beads. Ulloa Girón described the purchase as being for “(Summer Reading Challenge) props and supplies,” but the staff told police there were no Summer Reading Challenge programs that year.
A range of purchases made during personal trips to the Denver Art Museum, Ollivander’s Wand Shop at the Wizarding World of Harry Potter, Water World, a trampoline park, a gaming event in Florida and visits to Mexico, Colombia and Paris.
Ulloa Girón routinely described the suspicious purchases as being related to programs that didn’t match up with the library’s scheduled events or didn’t exist, such as a nonexistent “unicorn program,” according to the affidavit. She often provided receipts or confirmation emails that staff believe were altered because the information was different from the receipts provided by the retailers. In other cases, she told staff she’d shredded the receipts for purchases.
The investigation continued until earlier this month. Benbow filed the affidavit on June 8, and Ulloa Girón was arrested on June 11. She’s since posted her $50,000 cash/surety bond. The Coloradoan has reached out to Ulloa Giron's attorney but has not received a response.
Lapierre said it’s possible the library district could recover some or all of the lost funds through restitution. She’s also working to see if any could be recovered through the district’s insurance policy.
The library district is funded primarily through property taxes, which account for about 90% of district revenue. The district also gets some funding from the Poudre River Friends of the Library nonprofit and the Poudre River Library Trust. The district’s 2022 budget is about $11.1 million.
“The library does a lot of good work, and it's always unfortunate when something negative happens that shifts the focus from all the important work that we do and the positive influence we make in the community,” Lapierre said, adding later that outreach services offers “really powerful, good programming, and the people who work in that department are deeply committed to doing that work and continuing it. We don't want to lose sight of that.”
Editor's note: This story was updated on June 20, 2022, to include additional information about the library's former finance director.
All suspects are innocent until proven guilty in court. Arrests and charges are merely accusations by law enforcement until, and unless, a suspect is convicted of a crime.
Jacy Marmaduke covers government accountability for the Coloradoan. Follow her on Twitter @jacymarmaduke.
This article originally appeared on Fort Collins Coloradoan: Police: Poudre River Library employee used loopholes to steal thousands
