By Matt Wiley | May 21
A Wesley Chapel woman, who also is the treasurer of the Thomas E. Weightman Middle School PTSA (Parent Teacher Student Association), has been arrested on charges of embezzlement.
According to the Pasco County Sheriff’s Office (PCSO), Jocelyn Ann Severson was arrested on May 21 at her home on McKendree Rd. in Wesley Chapel for embezzling nearly $5,200 from the school’s PTSA fund between September of 2011 and February of this year.
By changing the mailing address for the group’s bank account, Severson was able to have the PTSA bank statements sent directly to her home, where she allegedly deleted evidence of her transactions and changed the balances accordingly, the report says.
The report also states that when asked for the bank statements for an annual audit by the PTSA president in January, Severson turned in all but three statements, but couldn’t come up with the missing statements on multiple occasions that followed, spanning the next several weeks into March. The PTSA president became suspicious and decided to go to the bank and retrieve the statements on her own. While at the bank, she discovered thousands of dollars less in the group’s account than what Severson had reported. Working with the bank, it was discovered that the statements provided to the PTSA had been altered and that the organization’s mailing address had been changed to Severson’s home address.
Following interviews with PTSA and Weightman Middle School officials, it was determined that Severson had been using the group’s funds to pay her phone, cable and car insurance bills.
Severson was contacted by a PCSO deputy and admitted over the phone that she stole the money and would turn herself in when she returned to Wesley Chapel on May 20, which, the report says, she did not do. The deputy saw her car and arrested her at her home. She said in an interview that she was using the funds due to “financial hardship.” Severson was charged with scheming to defraud and was released on a $5,000 bond.
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