If You Had a Bank Account With a Half Million Dollars, Would You Know About It?

St. Louis County Executive Charlie Dooley says a dormant health department bank account with a half-million-dollar balance is not news to him. “It’s always been there,” Dooley said Tuesday. A memo from his health department director, sent to county council members on April 17th, detailed the discovery of the money. Dr. Delores Gunn wrote that the $580,231.59 balance “has come to our attention.” Based on this statement, Dr. Gunn may not have been aware of it.

Dooley said the memo is being misunderstood.  “This county got hundreds of individual accounts. I mean, literally hundreds of accounts. It’s always been there and it’s not doing anything and it’ll be used for county business.” he said.

But a fellow Democrat, county councilman Steve Stenger, doesn’t accept that explanation. He said the account in question’s balance is $34,000 less than it was on December 31, 2010, and that the county auditor is “currently looking into that.”

In addition, Stenger said an audit of the county parks department found a similar bank account, along with accounting errors, that also total in the hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Read the details at: http://stlouis.cbslocal.com/2012/04/25/dooley-denies-lost-bank-account-stenger-says-there-are-more/