Employers, more than ever before, need to protect themselves against accidents and crimes committed by their employees. With negligent hiring, lawsuits, training costs, workplace violence and theft on the rise, pre-employment screening as well as taking the correct pre-employment screening steps are no longer an option, but rather a necessity for businesses.

Would you hire a convicted felon to be your office manager of your city street department? Probably not, but Richmond, Indiana city officials found themselves in an embarrassing situation after cutting corners on employee background checks resulting in the hiring of Julie Smitson, a woman who had previously served six months in prison on charges of theft and forgery.

Having already done time in an Indiana prison for stealing more than $65,000 from a previous employer, Smitson was hired October 27th, 2004 by the city of Richmond to serve as their office manager for the Street Department.

As if that oversight wasn’t bad enough, Smitson decided to appropriate city resources for personal gain. Charges filed by the Wayne County Prosecutor’s office allege that she used department credit cards to ring up more than $2,000 in unauthorized landscaping tools, garden supplies and other miscellaneous items for her own personal use.

She is being charged with 11 counts of theft and one count of official misconduct.

Richmond Mayor Sally Hutton was quoted as saying “When you do that (local criminal) background check you only get your county,” she said. “If you want a much more involved check, it’s a lot more expensive.”

Hutton did admit that there had been oversight and that more in-depth background checks would be run on new hires in the future.

“We’ve decided after this we will do a much more thorough investigation despite the expense.”

Living in an age where it’s all too easy to hide a shady past, cutting corners for the sake of a few dollars is never the right way to go.

This entry was posted on Thursday, September 10th, 2009 at 6:41 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.