Suspecting HOA treasurer of embezzling

Is the board 3 people? Why not change rules of how expenses are paid. For example require two signatures going forward. You can request detailed reports of what money is being spent on. If you don't get it you can go for an audit, which will cost you a pretty dollar. A treasures is just one vote on the board and it's the board that needs to decide if you want to spend money on an audit.

Thanks you for replies. Yes, I believe we can fire the treasurer, but we need to look at the books. The previous HOA president had to move, and also failed at trying to obtain receipts. The new president is also at a loss for looking at receipts of any transactions. I think that's good advice to look back at that many years. We should see some type of trend on spending right away. We owe it to our homeowners, and community to do the right thing, there's too much money at stake to let it go.

We had a very bad situation a few years ago. Our treasurer was not trying to embezzle or do wrong but it was obvious she couldn't do her job.

We allowed her to sign the checks independently and our PM dealt with preparing them and mailing them. We would get copies of the check stubs however in our monthly packets.... just for our review.

THere were more than one incident where payment was rendered to vendors when there was no work done on the property. ( in some event, it was a double charge ) that wasn't caught. Two check cut, two checks signed.. same amount, same vendor.

The biggest issue was when we caught a check stub made out to ready???? To an unknown vender, for pool care. We investigated and the treasurer signed a check for a vendor that we didn't use because the PM accidently gave her an invoice from another property.

IT WAS OBVIOUS this was too much of a job..

We decided as a whole, two signatures were needed and verified checks to invoices. Our treasurer could of costed us thousands of dollars had this not been caught and dealt with..

Having 2 signatures make it easier to take the suspicion or blame out of missing funds or miss management. This is how I'd approach it with your treasurer. IT keeps it all on the up and up and transparent as most boards like to run. 3 man or 5 doesn't matter.

Fiona, thank you, that's great advice. I'm asking the president to make this change. This is a big step, but should be done! I can't believe the issues you had? How many properties was it?

Eric, i don't have any easy answers for you. The first step is to get the rest of the homeowners in your condo on your side.
Secondly you need to have someone at the ready who is willing to take over the job.
We did this but it still took forever for her to gather all the records together to give to the new treasurer. I don't know how the new treasurer managed to persuade her to give up her job...but somehow he and his wife were able to press her to do it. If a majority of the board members want her to step down and she won't or won't hand over the records then i guess you have to seek legal counsel and get a court order on it.
personally i think the best thing is to have a professional accountant or bookkeeper in charge of the records, but yes, still have 2 signatures required.
I think by law 2 signatures are required for the reserve account but not for the opeating account.
But you shouold be able to get your rules for your condo changed to require it for the operating account as well but you need a cooperative treasurer.
I think the best thing is to have a professional bookkeping person as one of the signatures required and the treasurer as the other signature required.
I think that is how it is handled in my current HOA.
good luck on this. My previous HOA with one person being both the treauser and the president and not wanting to give up any records was just a nightmare and we were very lucky to have a very bright couple in the HOA who somehow were able to persuade her to eventually turn over the stuff and give up her treasury job.
I think they approached it with the idea that they would be helping her and that it was too much work for one person.
That is the problem with voluteer labor...people have their regular jobs and they get burnout.
There should be professional accounting or bookkeeping firms handling these matters but small HOAS don't want to pay for it so again i solved the problem by selling my condo and moving to a larger more professionally managed HOA.

This was just one property. The treasurer didn't mean harm... but it was clear. she could NOT do the job, unsupervised, it opened our eyes to having 2 sigs on all checks just to double check... a safety net and it allowed us to not blame or claim anything.