Former high school secretary accused of spending $80,000 on herself

A former Davis High School secretary has been charged with spending more than $80,000 in school funds on herself for items such as new flooring for her home.

A former Davis High School secretary has been charged with spending more than $80,000 in school funds on herself for items such as new flooring for her home. (Kristin Murphy, Deseret News )


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KAYSVILLE — A former secretary at Davis High School is facing a criminal charge accusing her of using school money to purchase personal items, such as new flooring for her house.

Kellie Heather Wilko, 47, of Layton, was charged earlier this month in 2nd District Court with misuse of public money, a second-degree felony.

Between July 21, 2020, and Feb. 9, 2021, prosecutors say Wilko had access to two different credit cards to make authorized school purchases. But she also made "multiple unauthorized purchases using Davis High School funds, totaling over $80,000," according to charging documents.

In April 2021, the Davis County school auditor noticed a transaction of more than $1,600 was made by Wilko on a PayPal account, the charges state.

"Because the transaction was over $1,000, (he) conducted a search and found 42 unauthorized charges from both credit cards to that PayPal account, totaling $40,991.62," according to the charges.

Additional suspicious transactions were then discovered, including one from Home Depot totaling almost $2,700. When Wilko was questioned by police, she "admitted that the Home Depot charge was for new flooring in her home," and also "admitted to making additional unauthorized purchases totaling $41,053.40. Accordingly, (she) admitted to making a total of $82,045.02 of unauthorized purchases," charging documents allege.

Wilko's initial court appearance is scheduled for Nov. 1.

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Pat Reavy interned with KSL NewsRadio in 1989 and has been a full-time journalist for either KSL NewsRadio, Deseret News or KSL.com since 1991. For the past 25 years, he has worked primarily the cops and courts beat.

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