Former UNC employee accused of embezzling $60K. How much the judge ordered her to repay.

An Orange County judge ordered a former employee of UNC’s Stone Center in Chapel Hill to pay less than half of the donations and payments that she was accused of embezzling in 2020.

Superior Court Judge Allen Baddour ordered Shakera Singleton to pay the university $28,892.64, District Attorney Jeff Neiman told The News & Observer in a text message late Wednesday afternoon.

Singleton, who left her job as an administrative manager at the Sonja Haynes Stone Center for Black Culture and History in 2020, told the court she had repaid some of the money. She pleaded guilty to three counts of obtaining property by false pretenses, according to court records and her testimony Tuesday in court.

The Stone Center had sought restitution of $60,412.47 for improper checks and charges made from 2017 to 2019, said Joseph Jordan, UNC’s vice provost for academic and community engagement and also the center’s director.

The financial problems were uncovered after an initial discrepancy came to light, he testified Tuesday.

The Unified Business Cluster, which is responsible for ensuring several UNC-Chapel Hill campus centers spend their money properly, “found that there were numerous moments or opportunities that (Singleton) took to take checks that were supposed to be made out to the center and had them made out to herself,” Jordan testified.

“She took trips, both locally, nationally and internationally, using Stone Center credit cards and also paid for friends to take trips using Stone Center funds,” he said.

A separate office conducts audits on that spending, he said, and also was involved in the case.

Jordan noted that Singleton’s duties included taking care of the Stone Center’s daily operations, from making reservations for groups using the building to managing Jordan’s calendar, collecting donations and directing deposits and payments to the right office.

The Stone Center does not pay its vendors directly, he said, but he would approve an expense and have Singleton send the paperwork to the Unified Business Cluster for payment. Singleton’s duties only required her to travel once for a fundraiser, he said.

He did not have contact with Singleton after December 2019 when he told her not to return to campus, Jordan said.

Denies intentional wrongdoing

Singleton, who was hired in 2013, said she didn’t learn about the allegations until she returned from Christmas break in January 2020. She resigned in early February, she said.

While Singleton admitted receiving checks for the Stone Center that were made out to her name and owing some money to UNC, she denied any intentional wrongdoing or theft.

Jordan knew about some of her actions, she testified, and other rules were bent because members of the Kappa Alpha sorority began writing the checks out to her to cover their costs for using the center.

She would receive the checks “under my door,” Singleton said. “The students would hand them to me, taped to my door. Sometimes, they’d give them to the security guard.”

Jordan was aware of the issue, she said, and told her to use the money for Stone Center purchases, such as balloons or food for an event. She started putting the checks into her account and kept records of the deposits and expenses.

Sorority members later told police that she told them to make the checks out to her, rather than the Stone Center, she testified during the prosecutor’s cross-examination.

Jordan also knew about some of the car rental expenses, Singleton said. As for the travel expenses, some of the money for the 13 trips was reimbursed to UNC in the form of money orders. She still owes the money for other trips to UNC, she said.

Singleton also spoke about using her PayPal account to cover some of the expenses. The PayPal operating system ended up charging those expenses to her Stone Center credit card rather than her personal credit card, she said, and she was not able to correct the error.

She lost access to her deposit and expense records when she resigned, Singleton said.

Her attorney noted working for the Stone Center was Singleton’s first job out of college, and the single mother of two was often asked to do things that were unfamiliar to her. Singleton is “very remorseful” for her actions and “has learned a huge lesson from that,” attorney Crista Collazo said.

“She was given permission to do a lot of things that were probably outside what she was used to doing or in her job description,” Collazo said.

The Orange Report

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