FOR RELEASE:

Audit Uncovers Court Clerk Surcharge Scheme
Village Court Clerk in Perry Admitted Guilt, Paid $59,000 Restitution

State Comptroller’s Office auditors have uncovered a village court clerk’s scheme to pad parking violation fines she collected and then pocket the difference, State Comptroller Alan G. Hevesi said today.

Ruth Milks, the former court clerk in the village of Perry in western New York state, was charged with grand larceny in the 4th degree. Milks, who entered a guilty plea and paid $59,000 in restitution, will be sentenced on July 1.

For at least 18 months, Milks had been adding an unauthorized $35 surcharge to $100 parking violation fines and then covering her tracks by preparing duplicate or incomplete records. The Wyoming County District Attorney and the New York State Police initiated an investigation after being notified by auditors from the Office of the State Comptroller and reviewing their preliminary findings. State Police estimated that Milks collected a total of between $125,000 and $250,000 in the illegal surcharges.

“This is a situation where one person’s criminal behavior was made possible by the lack of careful oversight by other village officials,” Hevesi said. “As a result, nearly 1,500 individuals had the illegal surcharge added to their fines and unwittingly paid thousands of dollars that went into the court clerk’s pocket. Shortly after the July 1st sentencing, these individuals will begin to receive refund checks for the overcharges.”

Auditors from the Office of the State Comptroller had initially planned a routine review of accounting procedures and internal controls in the Perry Village Court. They first became aware of the surcharge scheme when one of the auditors who had previously paid a parking violation fine in Perry examined the record of her fine and found that the payment she had made did not match the amount noted in the clerk’s documents.

“I want to commend the auditors from the state comptroller’s office in Buffalo for their diligent and thorough work,” said Wyoming County District Attorney Gerald Stout. ”If not for the particular auditor who came forward, we might not have discovered the scheme at all.”

Auditors found that Milks prepared and maintained records with no review or oversight by the village justice – her direct supervisor – and only limited oversight by the Village Board of Trustees. The village justice was Milks’ husband, Emmett Milks. Ruth Milks served as court clerk for her husband for more than a decade, and her husband was justice for more than 20 years. Before becoming clerk, Ruth Milks also served as a village justice, but according to local news reports she was removed from the bench for judicial misconduct by the state Commission on Judicial Conduct in the late 1980’s or early 1990’s. Both Ruth and Emmett Milks resigned from their positions shortly after the start of the investigation by the District Attorney and State Police.

Auditors also found that:

• Receipts for fines paid were not made available in accordance with state law.
• There was no inventory control of receipt books, which allowed the clerk to issue receipts to those who paid fines and then create additional receipts for court records.
• The Village Justice and the Village Trustees did not have a system in place to review the clerk’s required monthly report to the New York State Justice Court Fund. Had such a system been in place, auditors noted, the clerk’s illegal actions may have been detected.

In a response to the audit, the village mayor and Trustees said they were “grateful” that the Office of the State Comptroller had detected the misconduct.

Click here for a copy of the audit report.

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