BROKEN ARROW -- A woman is accused of embezzling about $200,000 from intellectually challenged adults at Gatesway.
Leslie Mansfield, 56, was found to have been embezzling money since at least 2012. She is in charge of their trust accounts with their social security money and funds left to them by their families.
"If they have needs, we get them their money so they can go out and go out to eat, go to a movie, buy clothes, just any of that," DeDee, the head of accounting for the Gatesway Foundation, said.
Red flags kept popping up for DeDee. Accounts she thought should have thousands of dollars were empty. She also said she was having a hard time getting getting documents she needed from Mansfield.
DeDee contacted Adult Protective Services and the Broken Arrow Police later got involved.
"We sent a copy of the last bank statement that we got to one of the banks she held the trust at and between the bank and APS, they discovered they looked like falsified documents that she was sending to us," DeDee said.
Turns out, Mansfield bought $25,000 worth of cashiers checks to a car dealership. Two of the adults lost their state funding and court documents show $90,000 was drained out of one of her client's accounts after they died.
The employees at Gatesway are devastated.
"To be honest with you, I am angry at her because she took this trustee position to supposedly watch out for these people and take care of them and she ended up stealing from them," Gloria Morton, president of the Gatesway Foundation, said.
Employees at Gatesway do not know if she has done this to people in other organizations.
"Most of us are very attached to a lot of our clients here. they are family, so that crushes us a lot," DeDee said.
The most heartbreaking part is these vulnerable adults do not even understand that they were taken advantage of.
"This particular one, he has no idea," DeDee said. "Some know the value of money. A lot of them don't."
Broken Arrow Police are getting a warrant for Mansfield's arrest.
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