Allegheny County employee accused of stealing thousands of dollars in taxpayer money from vault

PITTSBURGH — An employee at the Allegheny County Treasurer’s Office is facing multiple felony charges. He’s accused of stealing thousands of dollars in cash from the vault - inside the county courthouse.

According to a criminal complaint, Michael Joey O’Toole had been taking the money hundreds of dollars at a time over the course of a year.

O’Toole served as a supervisor and handled incoming cash deposits. The missing money was discovered during an audit about two weeks ago.

Why wasn’t the missing cash discovered earlier? According to the complaint, O’Toole took the money from wrappers containing a thousand dollars in twenty-dollar bills. The auditor would not count each wrapper and, according to detectives, would assume the wrappers contained the full thousand.

The complaint went on to say O’Toole admitted to supervisors that he took the money, even signing a written statement.

Channel 11 spoke to people outside the courthouse who said there should be more security.

“You would expect there would be something in place to prevent that sort of thing from happening,” one woman said.

“If there is a person who is by himself in a vault, there’s got to be someone next to him. You’ve got to have another check if you’re doing anything like that,” one man said.

Channel 11 did reach out to the Treasurer’s Office. We were directed to the office solicitor and received this statement:

“On November 9, 2023 the Allegheny County Treasurer’s Office discovered that an employee had stolen from County funds approximately $6,000 in cash. The Treasurer’s Office immediately alerted the District Attorney’s Office and terminated the employee. The Treasurer’s Office has confirmed all other cash is accounted for and no additional funds are missing. Full restitution is to be made by November 22, 2023.”

Download the FREE WPXI News app for breaking news alerts.

Follow Channel 11 News on Facebook and Twitter. | Watch WPXI NOW

©2023 Cox Media Group