A troubling discovery emerged from the Village of Ripley Police Department, officials found that $1,537 of seized cash had vanished from the department's evidence locker. The lost funds were linked to separate arrests, where police confiscated $1,151 in September 2018 and $386 in February 2019. Both sums were initially documented and secured in the locker, as per an audit report released by the Ohio Auditor of State Office.
Later in February 2019, an evidence technician realized, to their dismay, that the money was no longer where it should have been. The sums disappeared, only to compel the technician in charge of the evidence to personally remit the missing amounts over the next two years. These repayments, covering the lost funds, were concluded in 2020 and 2021, as the town faced an audit probing more than two dozen financial irregularities occurring between January 2019 and December 2020.
The auditor's comprehensive online report provides public access to the full scope of the audit's findings and specific details concerning the management of the Village's finances.
