Florida State University Embezzlement scandal leads to management upheaval

Innovation Park is currently undergoing major management changes, after it was revealed that former bookkeeper and office manager Shanna Lewis had embezzled money from the park.

Authority Board Treasurer Bob Rackleff, newly appointed this past February, who is also chairman of the Leon County Board of Commissioners, attested that Lewis may have embezzled as much as half a million dollars in the last two years.
The park has an annual budget of $1.1 million, Rackleff said. Rackleff, like many, is at a loss to explain how the issue went undetected for so long.
“That’s the $64,000 question,” Rackleff said. “The only thing I can understand is everybody was just asleep at the switch […] In a word, it was complacency.”
Lewis developed a complex system for embezzling money. She deposited checks in her bank account at Florida Commerce Credit Union, which then sent the check to Wachovia—Innovation Park’s bank. Wachovia scanned the check and sent a bank statement with the scanned images.
“She would open up the bank statement and alter the images of the checks to be made out to various venders,” Rackleff said. “So you’d look at that and say, oh, here’s a $4,600 check to R&R Services, which had actually been a $4,600 check to Shanna Lewis.”
The only authority Lewis had to report to was the park’s Executive Director, Linda Nicholsen, who hired Lewis in November of 2001 without conducting a background check. Doing so would have revealed that, for the first four months Lewis was employed at Innovation Park, she was serving a six-month sentence for embezzling $180,000 from Herrell Roofing Company.
Authority board member Bill Hebrock, who represents the private sector on the board, said supervision over Lewis was absent, to the extent that “Ms. Nicholsen allowed the bookkeeper to take public financial records to her home, and Ms. Nicholsen did not maintain her own access and supervisory control over the bookkeeper’s in-office computer and financial records.”
Both board members had called for Nicholsen, who has been with the park since 1997, to step down from her position as executive director before she announced plans to retire in September, according to the Tallahassee Democrat. Nicholsen could not be reached for comment on this story.
On Lewis’ 2008 annual employee evaluation, found in public records, Nicholsen graded Lewis’ level of reliability and trustworthiness as “excellent,” writing, “Shanna keeps busy and is often pulled in many directions, but seldom needs supervision.”
Rackleff said that, because of the lack of leadership, Innovation Park has been performing far below potential. He called the park more of a “real estate operation” than a “research park operation,” and said the board has higher ambitions for Innovation Park.
“We have two factories out there, which are not research activities,” Rackleff said. “We’ve got some state offices out there that just barely count as research functions. Certainly, FSU and FAMU have written off Innovation Park.”
He said that the universities involved have had a diminishing interest in the park because of a perceived lack of vision for the park’s future.
It’s basically, ‘Let’s collect the rent and keep the grass mowed,’” Rackleff said.
Though he acknowledges that there are fascinating, important projects going on in the park, highlighting the National High Magnetic Field Laboratory, he expressed regret that these projects have not been developed more fully.
“There should have been dozens of spinoffs from that; spinoff businesses and laboratories that have not materialized yet,” Rackleff said. “And that really gets back to the leadership of the Innovation Park administration.”
Hebrock said that an “Inter-local Agreement” has been approved by the Leon County Commission and by the Innovation Park Board on Tuesday, June 1 “to have the very capable and professional financial, administrative and legal staff of Leon County to temporarily handle and restore to accuracy of Innovation Park’s financial records, administrative procedures, personnel procedures and legal concerns.”
This step was intended to reduce the park’s administrative expenses, according to Rackleff.
This is a temporary move until Sept. 30, at which point the board expects to have an executive director and more ideas on a long-term strategy. A search committee is currently looking for an executive director with, according to Rackleff, an understanding of scientific research and university research-related projects.
Another step the board has taken to create a system of checks and balances is to appoint the treasurer as the only person who can open bank statements.
Rackleff also said that he had talked with President Ammons of Florida A&M University and several senior members of Florida State University to assure them that the park will be going in a new direction.
“We are determined to have a stronger partnership with them, as well as TCC, so we can all benefit from fully realizing the goals of this research park,” Rackleff said.