The city will be filing a civil lawsuit against Sharon Scanlon, the former assistant finance director who resigned last week amid a probe into theft of city money, Mayor Mark Lauretti said Monday.
The mayor said that a lien against property owned by Scanlon on Crescent Drive is one of several possible avenues of restitution to recover the “hundreds” of thousands of dollars he says the city is owed.
“There will be a civil lawsuit. There will be. No matter what,” Lauretti said. “We feel pretty confident that, at least by what we know now, that we’ll be able to make the city whole.”
He said the city would sue “at least” Scanlon, adding that the case could eventually involve other, unnamed defendants.
News of the alleged theft broke Friday, when the mayor announced that state police were investigating the theft of hundreds of thousands of dollars of city funds and that Scanlon had resigned the day before after he had sent her a termination notice.
The mayor also announced that he had put Marusic, a city employee for nearly three decades, on administrative leave, but that he was not a suspect in the theft.
Neither Scanlon nor Marusic have returned calls for comment. There was no answer at the doors of either of their houses Monday, either.
While Lauretti said Monday he’s confident the city will be made whole, he did add that an internal investigation into the thefts hasn’t yet concluded.
“That could change,” he said. “That’s why I’m so reluctant to say anything. People are so quick to say ‘You said this on such-and-such a date.’ Yeah, because that’s the information we had on such-and-such a date.”
A lien against a house Scanlon owns on Crescent Drive is one of several possible avenues of restitution, Lauretti said Monday, saying there were others, too, but declining to be specific.
“Everything is on the table,” Lauretti said. “If (the property) has value and there’s an asset there, then we’ll look for that.”
“There are really probably four or five different areas where we could seek restitution,” he went on. “Rather than say what they are, we want to be sure they are avenues.”
Shelton’s internal probe — made up of Lauretti, the city’s attorneys, and its auditors — has been going on for “a month-and-a-half to two months,” the mayor said, and state police have been involved “for probably about a week-and-a-half.”
The mayor also disputed an account Marusic gave the CT Post Friday about how the theft was uncovered.
According to the Post story, Marusic said he discovered the apparent misappropriation July 25, pegging the amount at between $218,000 and $320,000.
The July 25 date would obviously be later than the month-and-a-half figure Lauretti gave as the minimum length of time the internal probe has been going on.
Regarding Marusic’s account, Lauretti hesitated before saying, “I think there’d be some people who would disagree with that.”
“That’s subject to a discussion for another day,” he went on. “If he had information prior, I think he’s got a responsibility to tell his boss.”
The mayor said he hasn’t heard anything about the state police probe, but that he wouldn’t go out of his way to, either.
“When they come in, we step aside and let them do what they’re going to do and don’t ask questions,” Lauretti said. “We don’t follow them around. We don’t make suggestions. We let them do what they’re good at doing.”
If the city does file a lawsuit against Scanlon, it would proceed regardless and independent of any possible criminal charges brought as a result of the state police probe.
For example, the town of Oxford is pursuing a lawsuit against its former tax collector, Karen Guillet, accused of stealing public money there. Guillet was eventually accused of stealing nearly $250,000 by state police, though in the lawsuit the town estimates the damages to be far greater.
Early on in Oxford’s civil case, the town sought — successfully — to “attach” Guillet’s assets to the case to the tune of $699,000.
That case, filed in December 2010, is still pending.
