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Fugitive librarian charged in thefts
Friday, February 26, 1999 By Mary Niederberger, Post-Gazette Staff Writer
Yesterday afternoon, Bethel Park Library Director Dorothy "Dot" Corbett, 57, went from being a missing person to being a fugitive.
Bethel Park police have issued a warrant for her arrest, charging her with six counts each of theft by deception and receiving stolen property in connection with $27,500 in missing funds from a library account.
Corbett has been missing since Feb.16 and police Chief Ed Felicetti said police did not know where she is.
Felicetti said be believed the missing money came from an account that held the money the library received in Regional Asset District tax revenue.
Felicetti said that since 1996, Corbett wrote six checks from a library account to a fictitious agency called the Library Bureau. She had set up an account for the Library Bureau at a Mellon Bank branch, where she kept other library funds, the chief said.
Felicetti gave this account of the purported scheme:
Corbett would write checks from the account, some of which she countersigned, others she asked library board members to sign, with the understanding that they were for payment of some legitimate service.
Then Corbett would deposit the checks into the fictitious Library Bureau account she established at Mellon Bank - an account that only she had access to.
She then withdrew the money from that account for her own use.
Felicetti said bank managers didn't question the Library Bureau account because they had dealt with Corbett for years and trusted her. She had been library director for 16 years. He said police do not know where the money went.
"We'll need her to tell us that," Felicetti said.
At the library, Corbett was the only one who handled the RAD funds, he said.
Both the municipality of Bethel Park and the library board have hired auditors to go over all of the library's accounts. Felicetti said the auditors will most likely go back at least three years, since that's when the library started to receive RAD funds.
In 1998, the library received $174,500 in RAD funds. Corbett never filed the library's financial disclosure form detailing how it spent its RAD money that year.
The library's funds were audited in 1996 and 1997, but the reports did not show any funds were missing.
According to the audited 1997 annual financial statement, Bethel Park Library received $356,063 from the municipality, $67,190 from the state and $176,678 in RAD funds.
Felicetti said joint audits recently undertaken by the municipality and the library board could uncover more missing funds.
When Corbett was first reported missing, Felicetti said, police did not know if money was missing from the library. It was only after a brief audit by library board members over the weekend that the $27,500 was discovered missing, he said.
"It's pretty common practice when somebody at a level like that disappears. Let's check out the money to see if it's all there," the chief said of the board's decision to check the library's books.
Last night, library board President Nick Fisfis read a statement to the media during a special meeting of the board.
Fisfis said when the joint audits being done by his board and the municipality are completed, the results will be made public.
The library board spent two full days "in an effort to ascertain, to the extent that it can prior to the financial review, the operational and financial status of the library."
Fisfis said that library board members had not commented on Corbett's disappearance because they are cooperating with the police probe, which requires confidentiality.
As a result of that probe and the audits, the library board voted to notify its insurance carrier.
The board also voted to appoint Mary Roellinger, an administrative assistant at the library, as its acting director.
Following his prepared remarks, Fisfis made a personal plea to Corbett:
"To Dot, wherever you may be. We are still concerned about you and please come home."
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