Suffolk audit finds $83G question on charity gift cards

A new Suffolk audit has found that Family Service League could not account for how gift cards, totaling $83,000, were given away to welfare clients and juveniles involved with probation.

Comptroller Joseph Sawicki said his audit, covering 2006 through 2008, found that the nonprofit agency working for Social Services and Probation Departments, could not show how the bulk of the $145,000 in gift cards were used or if the use was legitimate. The cards, ranging in value from $5 to $200, could be used in places like McDonald's, movie theaters, and stores like Home Depot and Target.

"The difficulty with using the cards is that they are like cash," Sawicki said Monday. He said the department permitted use of the cards "without any demand of accountability."

Sawicki could not determine if any gift cards were misused, but he is considering referring the audit to District Attorney Thomas Spota. Sawicki is also doing a payroll audit of the league, which has 44 county contracts totaling $5.6 million.

County officials emphasized the problem was uncovered by Family Service League itself when a program director at the end of 2008 was found with $35,000 in gift cards that had been bought to use up the annual budget for cards before year's end. They said the employee was fired, procedures tightened and the league finished repaying the county $83,000 last week.

Karen Boorshtein, the league's president and CEO, said the group was "outraged" when the problem was uncovered and was "very proactive" and "upfront" with the county in straightening it out. She also asserted that use of the gift cards may have been "poorly documented, but they were never misused."