A Collier woman was charged this morning with stealing more than $124,000 from a cosmetic surgeon who hired her as a bookkeeper.

Kathleen A. McCullough, 45, faces a count of theft by deception as well as related computer crimes. Allegheny County investigators today carried out a search warrant on her house after taking her into custody.

She is the sister of County Councilman Charles P. McCullough, an Upper St. Clair lawyer who has been under a year-long investigation for his handling of an elderly widow's trust funds. Mr. McCullough was not named in connection with today's arrest and an affidavit gave no indication that he played any role in the incident leading to his sister's arrest.

The affidavit says Ms. McCullough was hired in November 2006 by Lori Cherup, a plastic surgeon with a chain of offices in the county. She received a base salary of $100,000 as financial controller for Dr. Cherup's Radiance Surgery Center.

According to police, Ms. McCullough worked from her home at Nevillewood, logging on to Dr. Cherup's business computers from a private network.

Six months after she began working there, according to the complaint, Ms. McCullough began transferring money from Dr. Cherup's business accounts to herself.

The first transfer was $480.08 on May 5; it jumped to $2,380.38 a month later.

"At some point, Dr. Cherup stated that Kathleen McCullough's job performance had deteriorated," according to the arrest affidavit. "It was at this time that Dr. Cherup started to review Kathleen McCullough's work."

During a review of the accounts Dr. Cherup "noticed there were checks made out to Kathleen McCullough that she did not authorize."

On leaving her job with Dr. Cherup, investigators said, Ms. McCullough also changed all passwords on the company computer and deleted a large number of files.

Those actions led to two counts of computer-related crimes.

Ms. McCullough was scheduled to be arraigned before District Justice Elaine McGraw in Bridgeville.

More details in tomorrow's Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.