Finance Director Steals Over 1.5 Million from School Board Goes to Prison to Learn a Lesson

Laurie Wade, the financial director for the Franklin County Board of Education in Kentucky, was sentenced to 10 years in prison for money laundering and filing false tax returns.

Beginning in 2011 and continuing through 2019, Wade wrote numerous unauthorized checks from the school board account to herself and made false entries into the company’s accounting program to cover her tracks.

Simultaneously, Wade served as the treasurer of the Leestown Gospel Church and controlled its finances with little oversight. Over a period of several years she used the Church to launder money she had stolen from the school board. She made repeated deposits into the church bank account and then wrote checks to herself, attempting to legitimize the stolen funds. It was a check from the school board for $89,100, deposited into the church account, that first alerted the FBI to Wade’s criminal activity.