BREAKING NEWS – New Orleans, Louisiana – A former sheriff’s dispatcher in a suburb of New Orleans has been arrested, accused of refusing to return more than $1.2 million that had been accidentally deposited into her brokerage account, authorities said.
Kelyn Spadoni, 33, was taken into custody Wednesday on charges of theft valued over $25,000, bank fraud and illegal transmission of monetary funds, nola.com and WVUE-TV reported. The reports said she was fired by the Jefferson Parish Sheriff’s Office after her arrest.
Spadoni is accused of immediately moving the funds to another account and using some of the money to buy a new car and a house, authorities said.
Authorities said a clerical error had caused Charles Schwab, a major financial services corporation, to deposit more than $1.2 million into her brokerage account when it only meant to transfer about $82 in February, nola.com reported. When the bank attempted to reclaim the money, the request was rejected because the money was not available, according to the sheriff’s office.
She had done something similar to this last year, when she attempted to seize a car as her property, that was parked at a grocery store in her usual spot. “This is my money,” she explained to a judge at her hearing regarding the erroneous deposit. “I consider it reparations, and if Charles Schwab wants his money back, he should either get it from the federal government, or from any state in the south!”