St. John Vianney in Brookfield, WI cannot seem to catch a break. Their previous pastor was arrested for probably stealing around $128,000. Now, the parish has been the target of a cyber crime in which $121,000 was stolen. Amazingly, $84,000 was recovered before it "technologically" left the country. In previous posts, I have stated the need for parishes to have audits, largely because of in-house theft. At this point, it does not appear that this instance is a case of in-house theft. It could be a case of a virus stealing the needed financial information from one of the employee's computers or an e-mail phishing scam.
Nonetheless, the two-fold purpose of an audit is to ensure that a company is 1) keeping accurate books and not stealing, and 2) making sure no one else can easily steal from you. The second option is more rare, but is perhaps becoming easier because of the possibilities available with on-line banking.
Thankfully, the Archdiocese had decided while Dolan was here to enact bi-annual audits for all the parishes in the Archdiocese. Right now the first wave of parishes are undergoing audits and next year the second wave of audits will get the rest of the parishes. If these auditors are any good, hopefully, they will enact safety measures at our parishes to ensure that this will not happen again. This could all be bad timing. If St. John Vianney had had their audit three weeks ago, perhaps this would not have happened. In any case, I am happy the Archdiocese had already put a comprehensive audit plan in place before this theft occurred.
A Faithful Catholic
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