Toronto United Way worker Eldon Colpitts charged with stealing from charity, highlights vulnerability to insider theft

It's bad enough when when we hear that some low-life has stolen a charity donation box from in front of a store or restaurant cash register. It seems to happen every year to the Royal Canadian Legion's Poppy Fund or the Salvation Army's Christmas drive.

You kind of hope the people inside charities are a little more trustworthy. They're volunteers in some good cause, after all, working out of a sense of service to their community.

But we seem to get regular reports of insiders ripping off the do-good organizations they work for.

A City of Toronto staffer has just been charged with theft for allegedly pocketing "tens of thousands" of dollars in donations to the United Way campaign he was running, the Toronto Star reports.

Eldon Gerald Colpitts of Whitby, a Toronto accounting services employee, was arrested Tuesday and charged with theft over $5,000 and theft by person required to account, police said Thursday in a news release. He makes his first court appearance May 6.

[ Related: Charity donations stolen from mosque ]

Police allege that between 2006 and 2012, Colpitts, 54, stole money from the sale of discounted amusement tickets donated to the United Way campaign for sale to city employees in fundraising efforts and that he used the money for his own benefit.

At the time, Colpitts was the financial co-ordinator for the campaign within the City of Toronto, police said.

The city was working closely with police in the investigation, city spokeswoman Jackie DeSouza told the Star.

“We consider this to be an isolated incident but we’re taking it very, very seriously,” DeSouza said, adding Colpitts no longer worked for the city without saying when or how his employment ended.

She said the city moved last year to increase safeguards on its United Way funds but would not say what sparked that decision.

The Star said it appears Colpitts was tied to the sale of discounted tickets for venues such as Canada's Wonderland, Marine Land and Wild Water Kingdom as far back as 2005.

The Star said it could not reach a senior United Way campaign executive for comment Thursday and the organization's web site had nothing Friday about the alleged theft.

Trust and altruism seem to make charities vulnerable to insider theft.

[ Related: Second man charged in Salvation Army toy theft ]

Last fall, a Toronto Salvation Army executive was charged with theft, possession of stolen property and breach of trust after $2 million in toys donated for the Christmas drive went missing from a Sally Ann warehouse, the Globe and Mail reported.

David Rennie had been under suspension since September and was fired the week before charges were laid in November. A second man, Umaish Ramrattan, was arrested a few days later when police raided a suburban warehouse and recovered some of the toys.

A Newfoundland woman was sentenced to seven months of house arrest last fall after being convicted of stealing almost $40,000 from the Brain Injury Association, where she was executive director, CBC News reported last November.

Keri Lynn McGrath was also ordered to pay back the money she stole between January 2009 and January 2010, which she claimed were reimbursements of petty cash, mileage, bonuses and salary.

And last month a woman was charged with theft, fraud and forgery after almost $23,000 disappeared from accounts set up to raise money for a Kelowna, B.C. high school band, according to CBC News.