Former instructor charged with embezzling $21K from MSU

A former instructor has been charged with embezzling more than $21,000 from Montana State University’s Western Transportation Institute.

On Tuesday, the Gallatin County Attorney’s Office charged Steven Jenkins with felony theft by embezzlement. An initial appearance has not been scheduled.

According to charging documents:


In May of 2016, an employee with WTI contacted the MSU Police Department about possible theft involving Jenkins.

The employee monitored enrollment and revenue for WTI, which is a department in the MSU College of Engineering that teaches classes on transportation.

The employee said she noticed that, dating back to July of 2014, WTI’s revenue was not as high as it should have been.

Jenkins had been instructing 17 or 18 private flagger training courses for WTI, which included more than 400 students, while working on MSU hours, using MSU vehicles for transportation and MSU funds for hotels, and printed kits for students using MSU printers and paper.

While his classes were registered into the WTI database, the school hadn’t received any payments or revenue through those classes and was not reimbursed for any of the other associated costs.

When the employee confronted Jenkins, she said he told her that he had made some errors with his bookkeeping and retroactively applied some of his vacation time to the time he had used to teach private classes. However, records showed that Jenkins had not applied any vacation time to the classes.

Jenkins was ultimately fired from the school.

Records showed that Jenkins teaching his private flagging courses with MSU resources while working on MSU time, all of which he did not reimburse the school for, resulted in $16,695 worth of losses for MSU.

Jenkins also improperly used grant money to purchase items, and MSU was required to pay back that grant money. He also didn’t return a number of items he was asked to after he was fired. Those losses to MSU totaled about $3,189.

And Jenkins spent $1,664 to make class materials for his students.

The total loss to MSU, police said, was $21,548.

During the investigation, Jenkins’ attorney told a detective that he would not speak with investigators. Jenkins later contacted the detective and said he was confused over how he could embezzle money when he didn’t directly handle money for MSU.