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There Be Thieves in Texas!

Gatesville, Texas is a small community in central Texas, located in Coryell County, approximately 40 miles west
of Waco. Gatesville is the largest municipality in Coryell County and functions as county seat. It is typical of
most Texas communities of its size. It still has a reasonably thriving downtown area, a town square, one high
school, and a strong sense of friendliness within the community. Like many Texas towns, football is king and
most of the social activities center around the high school and local churches. In fact, very few things occur in
Gatesville that everyone in the community does not know about. It seems as if everyone who lives in Gatesville
knows everyone else who live in Gatesville. The largest employer in the Gatesville area is a branch facility of the
Texas Department of Corrections (state prison system) for housing convicted adult felons. Therefore, people in
Gatesville are not inexperienced in dealing with criminals. Yet, the community was stunned in the fall of 1993
DOKUMEN
when a longtime employee of the Coryell County Tax AssessorCollector’s office was arrested by the county sheriff
and charged with the embezzlement of tax receipts. Then, just as the news of the arrest was beginning to sink
in to residents, they were shocked by what happened a week later. The accused employee committed suicide.

Facts of The Case

The Setup IAI
Joan Wilson had worked in THE Coryell County Tax Assessor-Collector’s (TAC) office for more than twenty
years. During that time, she had performed a number of accounting functions for the Coryell County TAC
office. In addition, she had worked closely with Joan Blanchard, who eventually was elected to be the county’s
TAC Director. As a result of the years that Blanchard and Wilson had worked together and known each other,
Blanchard gained complete trust and confidence in Wilson and demonstrated this trust and confidence by
appointing Wilson to the Chief Deputy position shortly after Blanchard took elected office. In fact, they became
indirectly related in that Blanchard’s son married Wilson’s daughter. Blanchard’s trust and confidence in Wilson
was so strong that she believed that Wilson would carry out her duties on an ethical, honest and professional
basis.

As a result of this trust and confidence, Wilson was allowed by Blanchard to carry out her function as Chief
Deputy with only a minimum of oversight. After all, if Blanchard could not trust Wilson in her doing her job,
who could she trust? Blanchard would review reports as they were prepared by Wilson, but she rarely, if ever,
reconciled any of the accounting data in the reports to supporting detail documentation. Being a relatively small
tax assessor-collector’s office, budget constraints and turnover would occur which would necessitate changes in
job duties. Any time such changes occurred, Wilson was always willing, if not anxious, to take on the added
responsibilities. Again, because of the trust Blanchard had in Wilson, she would usually allow Wilson to take on
the added duties and responsibilities, Wilson appeared to be a willing, dedicated, hardworking employee who
was not afraid to do whatever was necessary to see that the job got done!

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