Ex-Sunnyvale, California PTA treasurer to be sentenced Monday for embezzlement.

FROM http://www.mercurynews.com:

 

 

When former PTA treasurer Dawn Saugen is sentenced Monday for embezzling $30,000, it will close a painful chapter at Vargas Elementary in Sunnyvale.

But the wounds from the deception will be slower to heal, and the trust harder to rebuild.

Saugen, 38, has already pleaded no contest to grand theft. Under the terms of the deal, she faces a maximum of a year in jail, deputy district attorney Paola Estanislao said. As part of the deal that dropped a forgery charge, Saugen agreed to pay at least $30,000 in restitution to the Parent Teacher Association.

Saugen became the Vargas PTA treasurer when her niece, who was in fourth grade, attended the school in 2011-12. From August through January, Saugen purchased gift cards, ostensibly for PTA fundraisers. She would intercept the PTA mail in the school office, then later had the cards shipped directly to her Palo Alto home.

The cards came from popular retailers such as Amazon, Walmart, Best Buy, Target and Nordstrom. She even arranged to get cards from American Airlines. In opening a debit account with a fundraising gift-card company, she forged then-PTA President Maria Dulay's signature.

The funds Saugen siphoned off would have paid for field trips, classroom supplies, teacher grants and assemblies at the school where 75 percent of students are classified as low-income.

Saugen, who has since moved to California's Central Valley, did not return calls seeking comment. Her attorney, Jerome Mullins, who also would not comment to the Mercury News on the case, did send a terse email response: "Don't you have anything better to do?"

Ordering gift cards

PTAs, like other volunteer groups, are built on trust and familiarity. So in January when Union Bank informed Dulay that the organization's account was overdrawn, Dulay said her first instinct was that there must be some mistake. Saugen was well known and visible around the school.

"You have to trust people who are volunteering," Dulay said.

But Saugen had regularly refused to provide treasurer's reports at PTA meetings, Dulay said, and instead offered various excuses like computer difficulties or illness.

After discovering the fraudulent orders from the gift-card company, Dulay and other PTA officers went to police. Saugen was arrested Feb. 17.

But some parents and students whom Saugen had befriended remained disbelieving. In angry meetings, some blamed other PTA officers for either not detecting the fraud or somehow being implicated, Dulay said. The criminal revelations sowed tension within families, as they struggled to reconcile them with the woman described as charming, friendly and seemingly caring about the school. .

According to Saugen's family members, this is not the first time money in her care has gone missing.

On Monday, relatives will present oral and written statements to Santa Clara County Superior Court Judge Kurt Kumli as part of the sentencing procedure.

They will say she has defrauded her grandfather, uncle, father, brother and in-laws of several hundred thousand dollars, sending several into bankruptcy as a result, said one relative who lost money to Saugen and did not wish to be named in the story.

"She's a professional," he said. "She's been doing this for 20 years."

Family accusations

Efforts to win justice or restitution have bogged down, he said.

Family members say Saugen has used the same techniques she employed at Vargas to gain access to existing credit cards. Daniel Drake, Saugen's estranged husband, accuses her of opening new credit accounts in others' names.

Drake, who is finalizing a divorce with Saugen, said about $1,000 vanished from a book fair at his children's school in the Central Valley, after Saugen took home the cash box.

The couple was married in September 2008 and separated a year later, Drake said, after he discovered theft from his and his parents' credit cards. He has won a judgment of $7,500 from her.

Relatives also scoffed at Saugen's claim in court that she suffers from post-traumatic stress syndrome from her military service. They said she did not serve in combat.

Drake said he plans to speak at the sentencing hearing: "I want to make sure the court knows just what this woman has put people through."