BATON ROUGE - BREC's Internal Audit department announced Friday that it uncovered employee fraud where an employee spent approximately $67,000 in purchase card misuse over a five-year period.

According to BREC, the employee used a BREC-issued card to pay expenses for his personal business, which they uncovered during a routine audit review.

BREC Superintendent Corey K. Wilson issued a statement saying the employee is no longer employed by BREC, a police report has been filed, the Louisiana Legislative Auditor was notified, and they plan to prosecute the former employee. They also plan to discipline employees who failed to follow the internal controls in place.

“While I am glad that our Internal Audit department was able to catch and stop this gross misappropriation of the tax dollars entrusted to us by the citizens of East Baton Rouge parish, I am equally disappointed and embarrassed that the inappropriate transactions were not caught through the controls that we had in place to prevent this type of thing,” Wilson said.