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WTTW employee who fled theft allegations faces arraignment

Originally published in Current, Feb. 23, 2004

An accountant accused of embezzling funds from public TV station WTTW will appear in a Chicago criminal court March 3 [2004]. Fe Corizon Cruz-Fabunan, a former accounts payable manager who retired from the station in 2002, has been charged with three counts of theft and two counts of forgery, according to the court.

After WTTW discovered the theft in February 2002, its internal investigation found $260,000 had been stolen since 1999. The station reported the theft to police, but when authorities sought Cruz-Fabunan for questioning she had fled the state. She turned herself in to police last month.

The station recovered the lost funds through insurance and tightened its internal controls, assigning cross-checking duties to different members of its finance team. “We have done everything humanly possible to ensure that such a theft never happens again,” said President Dan Schmidt.

Web page posted March 6, 2004
Current
The newspaper about public TV and radio
in the United States
Current Publishing Committee, Takoma Park, Md.
Copyright 2004

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