North Carolina state officials say an audit found bookkeeping errors in the Franklin County Clerk of Superior Court, where court officials had tens of thousands of dollars in wrong accounts. The audit attributes the errors to a lack of training and monitoring, issues that the office says it is trying to remedy.
Of the discoveries, the audit found that Clerk of Court Patricia Burnette Chastain’s office failed to conduct a reasonable effort in finding the owners of $59,616 in unclaimed funds and failed to transfer money that remained unclaimed for more than one year in 25 cases, which totaled $30,490. That money should have gone to the Office of the State Treasurer’s unclaimed property fund if the rightful owners could not be located.
Other issues identified bank reconciliations and guardianship and estate cases. Dozens of individual errors were also discovered in the audit.