No One Was Paying Attention To The Sex, Big Embezzlement at University

by Gary Snyder

For over thirteen years Scott Eaton the athletic director at Northern Kentucky University was having affairs with his many girlfriends. 

All the while he was embezzling about $311,000 from the school and using the money to give the girlfriends cash and buy them gifts.

Eaton, a husband and a father, gave one of his five NKU girlfriends $2,500 a month in university funds for two years but he stopped when the woman's husband contacted him.

He paid one lover's tuition during their 13-year "on and off" affair, mailed Christmas gifts to her last year and sent her e-mails early this year telling her he still loved her, the woman told a criminal investigator working the case.

Eaton's mistresses included at least four university employees and one student. 

Eaton told investigators he started that affair in 2000 and two more in 2008. He also said he had affairs in 1998  - the year he was hired at NKU - and 2002.

She said she had been having a sexual relationship with Eaton since 2000. She said she was aware he was married but not that he was having relationships with other women.

  

He pleaded guilty last April. He was fired in March 2013. Eaton's long trail of theft, deceit and betrayal landed him a 10-year prison sentence. 

To NKU's fault, no one was paying attention to how he spent the university's and taxpayers' money. Eaton realized the university was not keeping track of his spending. 

Eaton began buying Kroger gift cards with his university credit card and using them to buy other store gift cards to make purchases. Sometimes he bought items and returned them for cash.

Over the next six-plus years, Eaton used his NKU credit card 183 times to buy Kroger gift cards for his personal use. He started buying them in amounts of $2,125, then raised that to $3,135. By mid-2008, maybe because he started to worry about getting caught, he started spending less on cards - $1,440 was a favorite amount – but bought them more often.

By mid-2009, he was back up to $1,800. By 2011, it was $2,700, then $3,600.

He was still buying them in amounts of $3,600 when he got caught in early 2013.

Eaton had bought $262,106 in Kroger gift cards for his personal use, according to an NKU audit. 

The audit tracked his illegal spending to a dozen retailers. All told, Eaton spent more than $26,000 at Barnes and Noble and more than $8,000 at Kohl's and Best Buy.

NKU President Geoffrey Mearns said the school has tightened its accounting and reduced the number of workers who carry a university credit card.

After getting out of prison, he is required to begin paying back the $311,215 he stole. (article)

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