A former Montco school administrator stole nearly $600K for vacations, credit card debt, and IVF, DA says
Katherine Paprocka abused her authority at Penn Christian Academy in East Norriton, defrauding the cash-strapped school to fund her family's vacations and pay down her credit card debt, police said.
A former administrator at a Christian school in Montgomery County stole nearly $600,000 from the cash-strapped school, prosecutors said Wednesday, causing employee salary checks to bounce and devastating the institution’s finances.
Katherine Paprocka, 36, used the money she took from Penn Christian Academy in East Norriton to fund family vacations in Florida and London, pay down her and her husband’s credit card debt, and pay for in-vitro fertilization treatment, according to the affidavit of probable cause for her arrest.
Paprocka was taken into custody Tuesday and charged with more than 100 felony counts of crimes including theft, forgery, and dealing with proceeds of unlawful activity. She remained in jail in lieu of $99,000 bail.
Her attorney, Martin Mullaney, did not return a request for comment.
Montgomery County District Attorney Kevin Steele, in announcing the charges, said Paprocka used her position to take advantage of an institution that trusted her.
“This is a reminder that every nonprofit organization needs to have checks on any employee who has access to its funds so more than one person has control and oversight of the monetary activity,” he said. “It’s the only way to be assured the organization’s money is safe.”
The fraud was discovered in October 2021, when one of the school’s most prolific donors contacted East Norriton police, saying she feared administrators at the school were misappropriating funds, the affidavit said. Paprocka was fired two months later, as the investigation started to uncover problems with her bookkeeping.
After more than a year of combing through bank documents and financial disclosures, and interviewing former and current employees, detectives discovered that Paprocka had taken unilateral control of the school’s finances during her time as senior administrator.
She had applied for several payroll loans, forging authorization documents from the school’s board members, according to the affidavit. Paprocka also opened up lines of credit in the names of school employees without their permission, and commingled her personal bank accounts with those belonging to the school.
Detectives also found evidence that she deposited more than $21,000 in charitable donations intended for the school into her own accounts, the affidavit said.
She was denied additional payroll loans she applied for in the names of other employees, the affidavit said, at one point trying to create a second account with one loan company by pretending to be an administrator at Penn Christian Academy’s location in the Pittsburgh suburbs. In other instances, the document said, she falsely claimed to be the owner of the school, a nonprofit.
Paprocka covered her activity in part by firing other employees tasked with handling the school’s finances. She deflected questions about the collections agencies’ calls and bounced salary checks, the affidavit said, blaming the issues on clerical errors.
As a result of her misappropriation, 24 employees reported lost wages to the state, totaling $118,750.
During her tenure at the school, Paprocka gave jobs to her mother and childhood friend. All the while, police said, she lied about her own qualifications, falsely stating she had graduated from, and once taught at, Ursinus College.