Former Tech Employee Accused of Stealing $119K Pleads Not Guilty

(KNSI) – A former bookkeeper for St. Cloud Tech High School has pleaded not guilty to a charge of theft by swindle for allegedly stealing around $119,000.

Allison Paige Tadych was in Stearns County District Court on Tuesday.

She was charged in November 2019 after an audit of the school’s finances showed she allegedly stole from the school’s activities accounts.

According to the criminal complaint, the St. Cloud Police Department opened an investigation about money missing from the Tech High School activities accounts on September 30th.

Investigators say Tadych was responsible for all the money related to activities. The balance should have been around $150,000. The actual balance was $71,298. Auditors discovered several missing deposits for student activities for both 2018 and 2019. They showed $75,363.30 missing for 2018 and $43,487.26 missing for 2019 for a total of $118,850.56.

Tadych resigned from her position at the school in June 2019.

Upon her departure, the school took a look at the program to reconcile the account for the fiscal year and found significant discrepancies between the balance in the program and the bank account records.

Investigators say Tadych only recorded money deposited into the school’s bank. Auditors couldn’t find what happened to all the money collected at the school.

According to the complaint, an independent auditor was brought in to look at it, and they confirmed the school’s findings.

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