Back to court for alleged embezzler

WASILLA — A local woman fired from her job with the Anchorage School District after getting caught stealing last year faces fresh charges stemming from other alleged thefts from that district.

“According to what the police department is releasing, it was about $5,000 from Chugiak (High School) and $100,000 from East (High School) over the course of several years,” Anchorage School District spokeswoman Heidi Embley said.

Gayle White, 44, pleaded guilty to a charge of theft relating to the Chugiak incidents. She was on probation Tuesday when she was hit with these new charges stemming from her time at East. Embley said White worked at one other school in Anchorage, but there are no criminal charges from her time there.

Embley said the money that went missing came from students for things like activity fees, parking fees or sports fees. White would allegedly take in the money, give the student a receipt, then pocket some or all of the cash, filling out a different receipt if she was passing any of the money on to the school.

Embley said a school employee became suspicious of White at Chugiak, leading to the 2011 criminal case.

Officials also fired one of White’s colleagues at Chugiak for theft and employees at two other schools, also accused of stealing student cash, whose alleged crimes happened to come to light at about the same time. In the aftermath, school officials started looking into the pasts of those four former employees.

“We started looking into more schools, and especially schools where those four employees had worked previously,” Embley said. “The principal who worked at Chugiak at the time who helped investigate this situation following his retirement continued to contract with the school district to finish the investigation.”

It was that principal who uncovered the alleged $100,000 in East High thefts.

“She was at Chugiak for two years and it looks like she was at East for about seven,” Embley said of White.

Court documents show White was summonsed to a Wednesday hearing in Anchorage. There’s no word in the records as to how that turned out. She’s charged with three felony theft counts.

State business license databases indicate that after serving her jail term, White began working in Wasilla as both a Herbalife distributor and a day care provider.

Contact reporter Andrew Wellner at andrew.wellner@frontiersman.com or 352-2270.