Getting your Trinity Audio player ready...

An arrest warrant was issued Dec. 24 for a former Silicon Valley Community Foundation employee suspected of stealing $100,000 from the organization, according to the Mountain View Police Department.

Police spokesperson Steve McCoy said he could not give out any more information until the former employee, Frances Louise Stewart, 52, was arrested.

On Monday the foundation announced that it had fired an employee on suspicion of embezzlement.

“Our finance department noticed a discrepancy and they began trying to figure out what was going on,” said Rebecca Salner, vice president of marketing and communications for the nonprofit, located in Mountain View on El Camino Real near Showers Drive.

An internal investigation was launched and less than a week later the case was turned over to the Mountain View Police Department. Stewart worked in the foundation’s human-resources department, Salner said.

“The theft was identified by our finance department as a result of internal controls and we intend to pursue every possible remedy to ensure that restitution is made to the community foundation,” CEO and President Emmett D. Carson said in an e-mail.

“The incident remains under investigation by external authorities and the community foundation is engaging a forensic accountant to provide further assistance as needed,” a statement on the organization’s Web site read.

The statement emphasized that the money taken was from “flexible spending accounts” that are used for employee health care and dependent care expenses. The monies were not budgeted for any philanthropic grants or programs.

Any money that is not recovered will be covered by insurance, the statement said.

The Community Foundation oversees donations to numerous local nonprofit organizations and in 2008 awarded $264 million in grants.

Join the Conversation

10 Comments

  1. What is the budget for this charity? They seem to be swimming in cash. And their staff gets such good benefits that a missing $100,000 is only a “discrepancy”.

  2. Rumsfield – relax! This is a major crime & is being treated as such. Picking apart this article is useless – word is this is a major investigation, as it should be. As much as organizations like to keep insider job such as this hush hush, word got out & they decided to make the news public.

    While this org. does do well, why do you think they’re swimming in cash? The missing money comes from employee-related pre-tax funds.

  3. It’ll be interesting to see how this story plays out. No mention of a time frame in which that money was stolen. It wouldn’t surprise me if it was stolen over a matter of years.

    Somebody’s going to jail for awhile!

  5. Sadly this is more common then you think with organizations that do not maintain good internal controls. It is a shame that this person stole like this but the egg is in the face of their auditors for not tightening the internal controls to avoid it’s occurence.

Leave a comment