UPDATE: Carrollton man arrested for allegedly stealing over $10,000 from local charity

By Gary Scott on December 28, 2017 at 11:18am

Greene County authorities have released additional details regarding the arrest of a Carrollton man for alleged theft and forgery from a local charity.

As previously reported, after a warrant was issued for his arrest, 42-year old Bradley Cooper turned himself in to Greene County authorities on December 20th for alleged theft and forgery. Cooper is accused of stealing more than $10,000 but less than $100,000 from a small, Greene County-based charity, the Chloe Foundation, which works to assist families with sick children.

According to Greene County Sheriff Rob McMillen, Cooper was the treasurer of the Chloe Foundation, which was founded by Richard and Yvonne Harp in honor of Chloe Murphy, their granddaughter who passed away in 2010. Greene County Sheriff Rob McMillen breaks down how law enforcement was initially notified of the suspicious activity.

“We were alerted by Yvonne Harp, she was a person on the foundation that took two signatures for a check to be written out from the account. She had been feeling that there had been some suspicious activity going on but couldn’t really put her thumb on it until she actually looked at the bank records and saw that the balance was way lower than what it should be. She had a pretty good idea of what should’ve been in the checking account, according to some of the information that Mr. Cooper was giving them. Then when she actually looked at the bank records, she realized it was a lot, lot lower amount in the checking account than what (Cooper) was reporting it to be,” says McMillen.

McMillen says it was rather alarming to investigate an alleged crime of this magnitude, especially given that the victim was a charitable organization.

“I haven’t really seen this kind of case coming from a foundation or a charitable organization like the Chloe Foundation. Of course we’ve handled financial crimes before where businesses or employees were taking money, but that has been our past as far as these type of (crimes). The magnitude of the thefts is really disheartening for someone to be able to do this. We’re talking, probably in the ballpark figure of between $60,000 and $70,000 that was taken from the foundation,” McMillen says.

McMillen explains the tedious process of investigating an alleged financial crime of this nature.

“It was a pretty challenging investigation because of the fact that (the thefts) spanned over five or six years. These financial crimes are always challenging just trying to sift through the bank records and finding money that was taken out for legitimate purposes and separating those from the checks or cash that was taken out for criminal purposes. You had to have complete concentration or all the figures would start running together. I wanted to make sure that every dollar or penny was looked at as far as this account so that hopefully at the end of this case we can get some sort of restitution order so the foundation can receive the money that was taken by Mr. Cooper,” McMillen explains.

According to McMillen, after turning himself in, Cooper immediately posted bond for $1,000. In terms of what’s next for Cooper, his first court appearance is scheduled for January 8th.