Former Taher employee accused of embezzling lunch money from Brown Deer School District

Jennifer Dettmann, 48, of Kewaskum was employed by Taher Inc., a food service vendor, as the school district's food service director from April 2008 to January 2016. 

On Jan. 16, she was charged with embezzlement (more than $10,000) in Milwaukee County Circuit Court.

Dettmann's alleged embezzlement scheme started to come to light toward the end of the 2015-16 school year, when newly hired Finance Director Jeff Pruefer and Maryann Newenhouse, the district accountant, noticed a significant difference between Taher's reported sales and the food service funds deposited into the district’s bank account.

According to a criminal complaint, Dettmann would deposit only electronic funds, checks and a portion of the cash she received into the district's computer system. After creating a deposit slip for those funds, she would input the remaining cash not previously entered during the first batch. She would not generate a deposit slip for the second batch of cash, so that she could take the cash for herself, the complaint alleged.

By inputting the cash she stole into the district's computer system, Dettman ensured the funds that parents provided were still credited to their students' food service accounts.

"This allowed Dettmann to continue her scheme without fear of parent complaints of missing funds," the complaint stated.

Pruefer started investigating the history of the food service account, and found similar shortfalls dating back to the 2011-12 school year.

Pruefer was able to locate yearly “sales writeoffs,” representing the difference in the amount of sales Taher reported each year and the amount of money the district deposited in the bank.

The discrepancies ranged between $14,000 and $28,000 per year between 2011 and 2016. Over the course of that five-year period, the discrepancy between the two funds totaled $109,885, according to the complaint.

After Dettmann resigned in January 2016, the district did not find any more significant discrepancies between the amount of sales and cash deposited in the bank.

In an interview with a Brown Deer police officer on Nov. 29, 2018, Dettmann admitted that she embezzled money that was supposed to be deposited into the school district bank accounts. She told police she was unsure how much money she took, but believed it to be about $50,000, according to the complaint.

Dettmann was scheduled to make her initial court appearance on Jan. 30.