Las Vegas NowArrest Report Obtained for UMC Arrest
33-year-old Keisha Jones was arrested on Wednesday night after a Metro sting operation.The Channel 8 I-Team has obtained the arrest report of a former UMC employee, arrested for allegedly stealing money from the county-run hospital. Metro investigators say that employee may have stolen more than $100,000 since January of 2007.
In the arrest report, detectives say the now former employee admits to taking the money to pay off debts. Detectives also say the woman told them she had planned to pay the money back, and that she started crying when confronted by detectives about the extent of the alleged crime.
33-year-old Keisha Jones was arrested on Wednesday night after a Metro sting operation allegedly caught Jones siphoning cash from patient deposits. Jones worked at UMC's Lied's Ambulatory Care Facility on Pinto Lane.
Detectives say Jones prepared two separate sets of accounting documents, one which went to the hospital's accounting department, the other to the bank. Detectives allege she pocketed the difference.
UMC Chief Executive Kathy Silver says the hospital itself discovered the potential problem during an audit and called in Metro.
"You know, we want to make sure that we look at every inch of UMC, we want to shine a light in every corner of UMC to make sure that these things don't go on, that they don't have an opportunity to go on, and that was one of the reasons we were looking at this process," she said.
Hospital officials stress that no patient accounts are affected. The way the alleged scam was set up -- patient accounts were credited with the full amount of payment but the actual deposits sent to the bank were lower.
That difference was allegedly pocketed and, because UMC is a county-run hospital, the victims are the taxpayers. UMC also told the I-Team there was another, unrelated arrest last week of an employee in the hospital's offsite business office.
All we know at this point is that the employee's name is Sandra Delcourt and the alleged crime also involved missing cash. Delcourt has been terminated but no charges have yet been filed.
As for Jones, she had been a UMC employee since 2001 but terminated this week following her arrest. She has not yet been formally charged by the District Attorney's Office.
