COWETA COUNTY, Ga. — An accountant at a Coweta County private school was indicted by a grand jury earlier this month and charged with stealing almost $270,000 from the school by fraudulently redirecting funds into a personal account.
Willard Huffins faces four charges in the case, one for racketeering, two for theft and one for identity fraud.
According to the indictment, Huffins opened a bank account in Central Christian School’s name without the school’s knowledge and began siphoning money into it in March 2017.
For the next 21 months, he deposited checks made out to the school into that account, using it for his personal expenses. Then he left his position as a financial officer at the school in December 2018.
That didn’t stop him from allegedly continuing to steal from Central Christian, however. Before leaving, he is charged with rigging a credit card machine at the school to deposit transactions – think parents paying school fees or someone buying a school T-shirt – directly into the still-active, still-undiscovered school account he originally set up.
Central Christian School did not finally learn about the account until April, nearly two years after the scheme began and following 158 deposits totaling $269,941.10.
The indictment alleges that $236,246 of that was through stolen checks and another $33,694 in diverted transactions from the school credit card machine after he left.
“All funds deposited into the Chase account were intended for the benefit of Central Christian School, but instead were appropriated for Accused’s personal use,” the indictment states.
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