State SPJ Investigating Possible Financial Fraud
UPDATE: This story was updated at 6 p.m. Wednesday, May 16.
Photo courtesy Flickr user 401K.
Yesterday, the Oklahoma Pro Chapter of the Society of Professional
Journalists announced that unauthorized withdrawals totaling more than
$40,000 had been made from the chapter’s checking account. Scott Cooper, the
chapter’s treasurer-secretary since 2008, and also the SPJ Region 8 director
over Oklahoma and Texas SPJ chapters, resigned from the organization.
The chapter’s president, M. Scott Carter, Oklahoma City and Capitol reporter for The Journal Record, said the organization is investigating the withdrawals but didn’t place any blame. However, emails obtained by This Land Press reveal that Cooper admitted to withdrawing $18,650 from the organization’s bank account for personal use.
In a resignation letter sent to the board of directors, Cooper said he took money by writing checks—about three dozen, he estimated, varying in amounts from $100 to $2,000—from the chapter’s bank account to himself. He used the money to either gamble at the casino or to cover personal expenses incurred because of gambling.
“The monthly treasurer reports I gave at the meeting were false,” he wrote. “However, I am certain the statements we sent to the IRS are true and accurate because those statements are based on how much revenue the chapter brought in, not how much money the chapter had in the bank account.”
Cooper publishes OKLegalNews, a website “devoted to coverage of
legal news from the Oklahoma appellete (sic) court system and the U.S. Tenth
Circuit Court of Appeals,” and he’s also a
contributor to The Lost Ogle, OKC’s news satire site. According to his bio
there: “He’s been covering Oklahoma news, government and politics for nearly 20
years. An awarding-winning journalist for enterprise and investigative
reporting, he has worked for the Tulsa World, The Oklahoman
and Oklahoma Gazette.”
UPDATE:
According
to a story posted today, Cooper resigned as contributor to The Lost Ogle
last Thursday, citing “personal issues that need my full attention.”
In a letter to Carter, Cooper acknowledged that “my journalism career is over” and wrote he’s accepted a full-time job with an insurance agency that he expects will allow him to pay back the money he said he took.
The statement released by the SPJ Oklahoma Pro chapter says the unauthorized withdrawals were discovered late in the day on May 8, and a special meeting was called May 11. In the statement, Carter said: “We’re continuing to gather information. Once we have finished, that information will be turned over to the proper authorities.”
He declined to comment much further than that, saying the investigation is ongoing and the board has only known about the withdrawals for a week. He expects to release more information to the public as it becomes available.
“We’re trying to be as transparent as possible,” he said. “It’s been all of one week, and I think we’ve done pretty good in that amount of time.”
The statement released by SPJ says next year’s awards contest “will continue and is not in jeopardy” and that “the incident was isolated and actions have been taken to protect SPJ assets.”
Emails exchanged between board members and obtained by This Land allude to worries about the organization’s financial stability and its credibility among the journalists who pay to participate annually in its contests.
Since Cooper has been on the board since 2008, and secretary-treasurer since the middle of that year, it’s possible funds have been removed, unnoticed, from the organization’s bank account for years, creating questions about the board’s governance. Cooper hasn’t been formally or publicly accused of embezzlement, though, and Carter did not attribute the missing funds to any crime committed by Cooper or anyone else.
—Holly Wall, News Editor
http://thislandpress.com/roundups/state-spj-investigating-possible-financial-fraud/
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