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Wed, 10 Aug 2011 00:54:31 -0700
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Thought you'd all want to know if you hadn't seen this yet.  Also some of
the links below were interesting, and I hadn't seen the articles before.
Arianne Laidlaw


Mark Twain House employee embezzled $1 million
August 9, 2011 |  8:30 am

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An employee of the Mark Twain House and Museum in Hartford, Conn., has
admitted in court to embezzling $1 million from the organization that
maintains the author's historic home. The Mark Twain House, like the homes
of some of America's other best-known writers, has faced financial
difficulties. Most, however, were not systematically plundered.

Longtime (and now former) staffer Donna Gregory regularly raided the
organization's coffers for eight years; she pleaded
guilty<http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/08/05/us-crime-marktwain-idUSTRE77476H20110805>
to
charges of wire fraud and filing a false tax return, Reuters reports.

According to court documents, Gregor submitted false information over the
Internet to the Mark Twain House payroll vendor between 2002 and 2010. The
misinformation allowed additional pay to which she was not entitled to be
deposited into her bank account, classified as payroll advances.

She then adjusted the ledgers to cover up the advances by reclassifying the
amounts as utilities, maintenance and similar items. She also falsified the
Mark Twain House's bank statements to hide the advances, authorities said.

Gregor used the Mark Twain House's check-writing system to write checks
payable to herself and forged her supervisor's signatures on those checks,
authorities said.

A board member of the home said the fraud was discovered when a bank staffer
questioned some signatures. Gregory faces a maximum of 23 years in prison, a
$2-million fine and will be ordered to pay back the Mark Twain House and its
insurance company.

*RELATED:*

Mark Twain stamp hits post offices June
25<http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/jacketcopy/2011/06/mark-twain-stamp.html>

Inside the next volume of Twain's
autobiography<http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/jacketcopy/2011/03/next-volume-mark-twain-autobiography.html>

Could a movie save Edgar Allan Poe's Baltimore
house?<http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/jacketcopy/2011/08/could-the-poe-movie-save-edgar-allan-poe-house-baltimore.html>

[*For the Record, 6:16 p.m., Aug. 9: *An earlier version of this post said
the Twain House is in West Hartford, Conn.]

-- Carolyn Kellogg

*Photo: The Mark Twain House in Hartford, Conn. Credit: Jim Bourg / Reuters*

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