Ex-Compton official stole $3.7 million in parking tickets and other fees, feds say. For years, no...

Ex-Compton official stole $3.7 million in parking tickets and other fees, feds say. For years, no one noticed

Each week, thousands of dollars in checks and cash arrive at Compton City Hall, as residents and business owners pay off their parking tickets, trash bills and various municipal fees.

The money adds up to an important chunk of the budget in a city once beset with financial problems and the possibility of bankruptcy.

But prosecutors say one former city employee saw all these payments as an opportunity.

Over the last six years, officials allege that Compton’s then-deputy city treasurer, Salvador Galvan, brazenly skimmed more than $3.7 million from City Hall, taking anywhere from $200 to $8,000 a day. The losses were small enough, federal prosecutors said, that they didn’t trigger alarm for years, but fellow employees privately wondered how he could afford a new Audi and other upscale expenses on a $60,000 salary.

Read more: http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-deputy-treasurer-federal-embezzlement-charges-20170329-story.html