Ex-CFO of Macon food bank accused of using charity money for spa, dentist and more
The former chief financial officer of the Middle Georgia Community Food Bank faces multiple theft charges as a result of an investigation into “unusual expenses” and record-keeping “irregularities” that allegedly happened during her 20-month stint with the Macon-based charity.
Julie Anne Nutter, who also served as the food bank’s human resources director, was jailed in December on 11 counts of theft by taking, according to a preliminary investigative report obtained this week by The Telegraph.
Nutter, 54, who had been living with relatives in Byron, has been in the Bibb County jail since her Dec. 6 arrest in lieu of $16,700 bond.
Court records show she is also being held here awaiting extradition in a grand theft case in Coeur d’Alene, Idaho. Investigators there believe she may have stolen more than $50,000 from Habitat for Humanity, where she worked up until a few years ago.’
Bibb County investigation
The Bibb County case against Nutter began coming together last fall.
A sheriff’s investigator met with food bank officials in the wake of Nutter’s July 2019 departure as CFO.
The head of the food bank’s board of directors had along with others, according to the investigative report, “identified irregularities in the financial record keeping and unusual expenses in the Food Bank’s records.”
A local accounting firm had by then conducted a forensic audit and at its conclusion suggested that, as Bibb investigators later described the findings, “there appeared to be a large amount of embezzlement being done by” Nutter.
The dollar amount of the alleged theft from the food bank was not mentioned in the investigative report, but the report mentioned “over a hundred purchases” made using food bank credit cards “as possibly fraudulent” and “unauthorized” charges “made to businesses that were not affiliated with the food bank.”
Some of those alleged charges were said to include purchases from Amazon.com and others at a Warner Robins spa, a tire store, an Idaho flower shop, a dental office, a pet-grooming service, a tattoo parlor, a veterinary clinic and a body-waxing studio.
The report said Nutter’s alleged criminal activity “remained undiscovered because of her fiduciary position.”
In an emailed statement to The Telegraph regarding Nutter’s alleged improprieties, Jeff Battcher, president of the food bank’s board of directors, reiterated much of what investigators noted in their report.
“During our annual audit performed by third party auditors,” Battcher wrote, “we discovered reporting irregularities that led to the Board’s determination to turn our findings over to local authorities for prosecution.”
Arresting Nutter
A sheriff’s investigator had in early December tried to find out where Nutter was living. He traced her to a Byron address where her daughter lived but learned she had moved after a “falling out,” the investigative report noted.
While the investigator was serving court orders for financial records at some of the businesses where Nutter allegedly used food bank credit cards, the investigator was informed at the waxing studio that Nutter had an appointment later that day.
She ended up canceling, but rescheduled for Dec. 6, the report said, and the deputy was there waiting when Nutter came out.
“During an interview, (Nutter) stated that she had purchased a bus ticket to Idaho and was supposed to leave (that night),” the report noted. “She said that a friend in Idaho had contacted her and told her about the Idaho warrant. She said she was going to Idaho to find out what it was, for as she had no idea.”
According to authorities in Idaho, Bibb sheriff’s investigators said in their report, a 2019 probe into Habitat for Humanity’s finances at the office where Nutter was said to have worked showed that she had “stolen over $30,000 cash from the Habitat for Humanity store and deposited these stolen funds into her personal bank account.” Nutter left Habitat for Humanity in June of 2017 and began working at the food bank in October of that year.
The Bibb sheriff’s report further mentioned that upon her arrest here in December, Nutter explained how “some of” the purchases made with the food bank credit card in Middle Georgia “must have been accidentally made,” but “she did ultimately admit to knowingly making some of the fraudulent charges. Mrs. Nutter offered as an excuse that everyone was doing it.”
It was not immediately clear when the case against Nutter might go to court.