TALLAHASSEE, Fla. (WTXL) - A former employee has been arrested, accused of stealing over $10,000 from the Florida Department of Health in Leon County.
Keish Kitchen, 41, was arrested over the weekend.
According to complaint documents, Kitchen is accused of collecting fees for environmental health permits but did not deposit all of the money collected. Instead, documents say Kitchen falsified records and misappropriated funds from January 2014 through June 2016.
Kitchen was employed at DOH-Leon as an environmental heath aide and her duties included entering environmental health permit information and processing the financial transactions associated with the license fees.
Investigators say Kitchen abused her position by collecting fees from customers, creating receipts, and deleting transactions from the system.
An investigation found that Kitchen had deleted at least 59 transactions without cause and had improperly issued 29 permits. Investigators determined that Kitchen stole a total of $12,420 from the department.
She has been charged with grand theft over $10,000, less than $20,000, organized scheme to defraud, offense against intellectual property.
Kitchen has since bonded out of jail.
