FORMER BELLEVUE ARTS MUSEUM CFO CHARGED WITH EMBEZZLING MUSEUM MONEY

The former chief financial officer of the Bellevue Arts Museum in Washington State has been charged with embezzling three hundred thousand dollars, reports Peter Edidin for the New York Times (picking up a story from the Associated Press). King County prosecutors filed thirty-eight counts of theft against Janet Ellinger, fifty-three, of Redmond, Washington. They said that she stole the money from the museum from October 2005 to May 2007 and that she took most of it by writing checks to herself and then covering them up with false entries in the museum’s financial ledger. Prosecutors said that Ellinger told investigators she took the money because she was separating from her husband and felt “financially compromised.”