The City of Shelton’s lawsuit against a former finance official who stole nearly $1 million of taxpayer money has concluded without a trial, according to court documents.
Background
The official, Sharon Scanlon, pleaded no contest to first-degree larceny and first-degree forgery last October and is currently serving a four-and-a-half-year prison sentence at York Correctional Institution.
She resigned from her job as the city’s assistant finance director in August 2012.
Click the play button on the video to see Scanlon speak at her sentencing.
Scanlon stole from Shelton for more than a decade, according to an arrest warrant in Scanlon’s criminal case.
As the criminal investigation of Scanlon proceeded, the city filed a separate, civil lawsuit against her in September 2012, saying she had stolen “at least” $348,000.
At the time, city officials said the number would probably go higher once an internal investigation wrapped up.
City Completes Investigation
It did — in March, the city’s auditor, David Cappelletti, of Woodbridge-based accounting firm Levitsky and Berney, filed an affidavit in the civil case saying that between May 2004 and July 2012, Scanlon stole $870,124.50.
That figure is slightly less than state police concluded Scanlon stole — $914,153.50.
But the affidavit noted that Scanlon had paid back some of the money.
“There has been a payment made by the defendant in the amount of $139,399.96,” Cappelletti’s affidavit said.
That would appear to represent a pension account Scanlon paid into over the course of her 17-year employment with the city, which she voluntarily surrendered in 2013.
Mayor Mark Lauretti said at the time that the city had also received about $500,000 through a theft insurance policy, though there’s no mention of that payment in court documents — and the city has never provided a full accounting of the money recovered.
Neither Lauretti nor Ramon Sous, the lawyer who represented the city in the lawsuit, returned messages by 7:30 p.m. Monday.
The Valley Indy also left a message seeking comment with Scanlon’s lawyer, William F. Dow.
Judgment Entered
As part of her probation, the judge who handed down her prison term ordered her to pay about $230,725 in restitution — the amount covered by the five-year statute of limitations for first-degree larceny.
Filings by the city in the civil case noted that state law would have obligated Scanlon to pay “treble damages” — or triple the amount she stole — if she had been found liable for the theft at a trial.
In that scenario, Scanlon would have owed slightly more than $2.6 million to the city.
But the case didn’t go to trial, because Sous and Dow agreed in a June 4 court filing to subtract Scanlon’s $139,399 “payment” from the total amount stolen and asked a judge to approve that amount as a final figure in the case.
“The parties in the above-entitled matter respectfully ask that judgment be entered in favor of the plaintiff in the amount of $730,725.14,” the filing said, plus a $525 filing fee and $60.64 in marshal’s expenses.
Judge Barry Stevens granted the request June 19 at Superior Court in Milford.
The document is posted below.
