Written by by OLIVIA RONDEAU at breitbart.com
A local Oregon newspaper has been forced to lay off its entire staff after discovering rampant embezzlement by a former employee, effectively shutting down the publication’s printing after forty years.
The Eugene Weekly began finding bookkeeping inaccuracies about a week before Christmas, editor Camilla Mortensen said to CBS News.
Upon further investigation, employees discovered that an ex-staffer who was “heavily involved” in the paper’s finances had stolen at least $90,000 from the company since 2022, and had left at least $100,00 in unpaid business bills.
Multiple current employees also noticed that money taken from their paychecks for retirement funds was never actually deposited in their pension accounts.
Mortensen said that the weekly publication had to let all 10 of its staff members go after the shocking discovery, and printing has stopped for the first time in decades.
“To lay off a whole family’s income three days before Christmas is the absolute worst,” the editor said. “It was not on my radar that anything like this could have happened or was happening.”
The suspect was employed with the Eugene paper for approximately four years, and has since been fired while the Eugene Police Department investigates.