Bookkeeper Stole $830K from Veterans Organization: Police

The bookkeeper of a national veterans organization is accused of stealing more than $800,000 from the organization and using company credit cards for her personal airfare, vacations, and Internet purchases.

Cynthia Tanner appeared in court on Monday, where bond was set at $500,000.

In late May, the president of the National Veteran Services Fund called Darien police to report embezzlement after an accounting firm discovered irregularities in the company’s financial statements, police said.

The National Veteran Services Fund released a statement saying they worked with their CPAs after the audit revealed issues, contacted an attorney and met with Darien Police.

"The matter is in the hands of the authorities for action and therefore we have no further comment at this time," and e-mailed statement from Phil Kraft, executive director of the fund, says.

Investigators said Tanner is accused of embezzling more than $830,000 from the organization’s checking account alone over a five-year span.

The charges, however, are just for what she is accused of embezzling in 2013. Police said Tanner is accused of writing 135 unauthorized checks in 2013 for more $185,000, made payable to herself and her family members.

Tanner had worked for the National Veteran Services Fund since 2008 and was responsible for payroll and disbursing funds to the charity’s clients, according to police.

The fund, based in Darien, accepts donations to help veterans and their families across the country and used the money to pay for wheelchairs, scooters and ramps for veterans.

They have also paid utility bills for veterans and their families in danger of homelessness, as well as provided temporary housing.

The fund has also provided veterans with snow tires, dentures and a veterinary bill for a veteran’s companion animal.

Police said Tanner is accused of writing checks from the fund to pay herself money she was not entitled to, as well as checks to relatives.

However, she fabricated the financial ledger to indicate the checks were written to veterans or clients of the fund, police said.

Tanner turned herself in to police on Monday.  She has been charged with first-degree larceny. She  was being held on a $250,000 court-set bond, but that amount was doubled. She is due in court on June 30.

Her attorney did not comment on the allegations and said he needs more time to speak with his client.

Tanner was arraigned in Stamford Superior Court on Monday and is due back in court on June 30.

Police said more arrests are expected.

Darien Police 

 Cynthia Tanner, a bookkeeper for National Veteran Services Fund, is accused of embezzling more than $830,000 from the Darien organization that helps veterans.

Pose POS And QuickBooks, Because Integration Is Key For Small Businesses

Anyone who has worked within a small business will know that the hassle involved with disconnected technology systems is even more of a pain for these small organizations than it is for larger ones. Small businesses have neither the resources nor the time to create custom integrations. Yet while larger organizations can utilize a variety of business suites, small businesses generally have to make do with solutions held together with metaphorical band-aids.

Given this fact it’s always interesting to read about a new integration that helps small businesses – case in point is an integration being announced today between POS vendor Pose and QuickBooks, perhaps the most well known and used small business accounting system on the planet.

With the integration, every transaction in Pose’s cloud-based POS will feed directly into QuickBooks. Currently customers using both systems would have to manually import all transactions – a laborious, time consuming and error-prone process. Pose is only a young company, its POS system only emerged from beta a few months ago. The company focuses on small, brick-and-mortar retailers – a massive potential customer base.

Of course Pose aren’t the only ones to realize that many SMBs could use a cloud-based POS system, competitor Vend has a similar product and Vend too has a QuickBooks integration they announced last month. That disputes somewhat Pose’s claim to be the “first and only POS system integrated with QuickBooks”. Of course there are degrees of integration and Vend spokespeople admitted that they’re “continuing to work on the integration and will have more news to share soon”. In response Pose stated that “Other POS vendors are not integrated natively so the transactions are not as seamless and it still requires the dreaded Excel spreadsheet uploads and downloads from one system into QuickBooks”. Hmmm, confusing huh?

No matter who was first in this space, POS/QuickBooks integration is a no-brainer. In the US, and despite QuickBooks-competitor Xero being focused on snatching customers away from the product, Intuit’s QuickBooks family has a stranglehold on the market place – it would be crazy of any vendor even remotely connected to SMB accounting to not integrate with the QuickBooks powerhouse.

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