Today, April 7, the Alameda County District Attorney’s office concluded its investigation regarding the parish’s financial situation. After independently corroborating the Diocesan forensic examination findings, the District Attorney has filed grand theft embezzlement charges against Rhina Ruggiero, former office manager of Church of the Assumption Parish. The charges state that, between 2010 to 2019, Ruggiero embezzled $590,377 by writing checks listing herself as the payee and requesting checks be written to “cash” and receiving the cash.
In late December 2020, after the diocesan insurance carrier conducted its own forensic audit utilizing the diocesan forensic examination report, the Church of the Assumption received insurance recovery proceeds of $433,124, which are net of the costs of the investigation and the insurance policy deductible.
Church of the Assumption, with the guidance of the diocesan financial staff, has taken significant steps to improve internal controls to prevent such an embezzlement from happening again. Core and specific measures taken to improve the overall internal controls environment and specific processes include:
- Parish leadership engaged Armanino LLP, a CPA firm, to perform outsourced accounting services in January 2020. There is now a clear segregation of duties. Key specific duties include:
- Third party processing of disbursements
- Minimal check writing in the parish office
- Two-step parish approval process prior to disbursement:
- Written approval prior to submission
- Electronic approval prior to payment
- Third party payroll processing, including parish-approved payroll master file changes
- Technical review of journal entries
- Parish leadership developed and implemented new financial procedures for the following activities:
- In-church plate collections
- In-office deposits
- Events and fundraisers
- Payroll timekeeping
- Parish leadership engaged Armanino LLP’s audit department (a separate operating unit from their outsourced accounting services) to perform an internal controls review. The resultant report provided recommendations for additional internal controls and process improvements. The status of implementation of the report recommendations follows:
- Ensured all bank accounts using the parish federal tax identification number are recorded in the parish ledger. Dad’s Club and CYO bank accounts were added as of December 31, 2020.
- Implemented tracking of the numerical sequence of tamper-evident collection bags used in the in-church plate collection process.
- Initiated parochial administrator’s review and approval of deposit and collection count sheets, bank statements, and bank reconciliations.
- Began outreach to recruit a second count team for weekly plate collections. (The rotation of count teams strengthens count procedure controls.)
- Reconciled second collections balances and remitted past due amounts.
- Updated all personnel files and initiated regular staff performance evaluations.
- Currently researching old, minor outstanding bank reconciliation items to determine appropriate accounting treatment, as necessary.
- A long-term budget will be developed in conjunction with the existing strategic plan.
- Initiated quarterly financial reporting to the community to improve financial transparency. This quarterly reporting will begin in April 2020….
The above comes from an April 7 statement from Bishop Michael Barber provided by the Diocese of Oakland.
What a despicable woman. I know first-hand how lax many parish office staff can be regarding parishioners’ contributions. Some parishes have head-scratching, willy-nilly accounting systems. Parish volunteers usually sort the weekly plate and envelope receipts, perform a cursory count, and then hand the funds to the bookkeeper for the final count for the bank deposit. If the pastor is not involved in the financial collection process top to bottom, front to back, then the system is ripe for malfeasance. If there is a weak pastor and poorly trained staff, bad things will happen.
Basic auditing and accounting 101. Beware when one ‘workhorse’ says they want to and can do it all themselves. The sunshine of a second person doing things and rotating duties reduces risk of such disasters.
How anxious some parishioners are to “help counting the Mass collection” seems only too obvious, sometimes.
There should always be some accounting double checking.
Unfortunately, this crime was committed by the former office manager and not a parishioner.
The diocese of Oakland has very specific processes for handling finances, especially the Sunday collection. The woman was able to steal the money because the Pastor didn’t follow protocols and the parish finance committee wasn’t paying attention. What doesn’t seem to have happened yet is the removal of the Pastor. The second issue of course is that too many of our priests aren’t trained in finance, accounting or management.
I blame the diocese and the bishop for not having a comprehensive audit process for its parishes.
Like any corporation, the diocese should have established a cash handling audit program years ago. More cash = higher risk, which is often the case in these parishes.Had someone come to this environment as part of that process, this may have been caught and recommendations may have been put in place earlier.
Also, the office manager was clearly living outside of her means, which no one would fully understand or make sense of until this happened.
There is another thing that one doe not do when handling large amounts of money, or any amount one cannot afford to lose. One should never deposit large amounts in auto tellers or night deposits at the bank. Take money directly into the bank when open and get a receipt from the teller and keep it until the next statements shows the deposit, which cannot be contested.
Santo cielo! “With friends like these…”
Why is there never a update?
She was a parishioner. Her own children attended the church school.