Two men accused of stealing $16K from Central Greene County schools
By Garrett Neese
newsroom@heraldstandard.com
Charges have been filed in Greene County against two Pittsburgh men who allegedly stole a check mailed from the Central Greene School District and cashed altered duplicates.
Brandon Vuocolo, 32, and Dominic George, 37, were each charged with 11 felony counts in cases filed Tuesday.
Vuocolo and George allegedly stole a $6,498 check from the school district sent as payment to Waller Corporation of Washington on Aug. 7.
According to their affidavits of probable cause, Vuocolo and George duplicated the check and then altered it to change the check numbers and amounts. Six days after the original check was mailed, they then took the checks to the Washington, Rostraver and Claysville branches of Community Bank. Vuocolo cashed three checks totaling $6,791.16, while George’s three added up to $9,756.72.
The incident was reported on Oct. 7 by the district’s business manager, Valerie Brooks, who said Waller Corporation had informed her they still hadn’t received their payment. The check had come out of the district’s capital projects funds, which only sends funds about once a month, Brooks said.
When Brooks went back into the district’s system, she saw the check had been cashed, she said Thursday. Checking the bank records, she found the check showed up with a different payee.
“My assistant was here with me and we realized, ‘Look at this. What is happening? Am I looking at this wrong?'” she said. “And no, there were several different transactions on that same check, but they had just washed it and put a new check number on it. So I immediately went to the bank and stopped everything, stopped payment, closed the account.”
The charges being filed are “good news,” Brooks said. Since the incident, she said, she checks with the bank every day to make sure none of their checks have been altered.
Melissa Francis, an investigator with the Waynesburg Police Department, said in the affidavit she had matched the photos on the IDs Vuocolo and George presented to the bank tellers to the video provided by Community Bank.
Vuocolo and George are each charged with 11 felony counts, including forgery, theft and receiving stolen property.
No date had been set for their arraignments as of Thursday afternoon.