There was a syndicated article in yesterday’s Lancaster Intelligencer Journal/New Era about an embezzlement of more than $30,000,000 of municipal money in a small town in Illinois.

The town is Dixon, Illinois.

A decade or so ago, we spent some time in this town of about 14,000 people. While playing golf at the Dixon Country Club one day, our host pointed out President Ronald Reagan’s one-time home was in Dixon. This is middle-America. This is the fertile ground which embraced the ideology of the newly founded Republican Party.

Then in mid-April, The Chicago Tribune and the Sauk Valley Press broke the news that the small town’s “trusted employee” allegedly had robbed ’em to the tune of over $30 million.

It’s a fascinating story and you can read lots about it in the Sauk Valley Press; the newspaper carries seven days of active articles, then readers are asked to pay for archived articles. If you click here now, you’ll be able to read the aftermath and chronicle of events. The Huffington Post carried this article.

You can read all about how this “small town” municipal trusted employee carried out a scheme that financed her extravagant lifestyle and how the townspeople are in disbelief.

An oft-repeated phrase comes into play: “I never thought that could happen here.”

Really! Come on; if it can happen it can happen anywhere.

(EDITOR’S NOTE: There’s an article in today’s Reading Eagle that has close kinship to “trusted employee theft.” The article identifies the financial mismanagement and a “spending plan shocking for its lack of details.”)