Former New Fairfield town employee won't be charged
John Pirro, Staff Writer
Published: 09:41 p.m., Sunday, January 16, 2011
NEW FAIRFIELD -- State officials said late last week that they will not pursue criminal charges against a former town employee who resigned last year after admitting she embezzled an estimated $50,000 from the Parks and Recreation Department.
The investigation of former recreation department assistant director Barbara Coelho has been closed, said First Selectman John Hodge, who was informed of the decision in a letter from the Office of the Chief State's Attorney.
Coelho was allowed to resign last January after an audit determined she had been taking cash receipts from the department for several years.
The Board of Selectmen decided not to seek criminal charges after Coelho admitted the theft and agreed to repay the money, a decision that sparked charges of a cover-up by Hodge's political opponents.
Critics said selectmen failed to adequately determine how much money Coelho took, and accused Hodge of trying to keep the restitution agreement secret, rather than going to police.
"That's only part of it. It still doesn't explain his liability," said Douglas Thielen, one of three residents who sought the state police investigation after the deal became public.
"This was definitely an attempt at a cover-up of a massive amount of embezzlement," Thielen said.
"I guess there's not a lot we can say," said Art Azzarito, a former selectmen who wasn't a member of the board when the Coelho matter surfaced. "But there was a felony committed here, and to cover it up is a double felony."
The money has since been repaid, and the decision not to file criminal charges shows that town officials acted appropriately, Hodge said.
"The case is over, and there was no cover-up," he said. "This is a complete vindication for me, the Board of Selectmen, and how the town acted. My main concern was that we made the town whole, and that's the bottom line."
Coelho has an unlisted phone number and couldn't be reached on Sunday.
In a four-page statement he gave to a State Police detective last May, Hodge outlined the reasons selectmen opted to let Coelho pay back the money rather than turning the matter over to police.
He released the statement in response to a Freedom of Information request from The News-Times.
Among them was that Coelho would routinely take the bag containing the day's receipts into the selectmen's office, and hang it on a wall, where it would be picked up by a finance department employee and handled by at least one other person in the finance office.
At no point in the process "did anyone confirm the amount of money they had received from the prior party," Hodge said.
Hodge also told police that he had been tipped by someone two years earlier to keep an eye on Coelho because she reportedly had lost her job at a local bank "because of money issue," and he subsequently learned selectmen had suspected her of financial improprieties while Azzarito was in office, but lacked proof to take action.
The issue came to a head in 2009 when Parks and Recreation Director Steven Merullo reported that three boat slips at the town-owned marina hadn't been rented even though there was a long waiting list for them, Hodge said.
Town officials eventually determined that the three slips had been occupied, but that the boaters had paid rental fees totalling $3,300 to Coelho in cash, he told police.
Contact John Pirro
at jpirro@newstimes.com or 203-731-3342.
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