Scranton<\/a> firefighter stole nearly $100,000 from the city’s firefighter pension fund, police said.<\/p>\nStacey Ann Bouton, 48, of Scranton collected $96,463.55 in pension payments made out to her mother, Henrietta J. Matticks, for nearly five years after her mother died, according to a criminal complaint charging Bouton with several counts of theft and forgery. Those benefits should have ended upon her death.<\/p>\n
The pension board discovered the errant payments in September and stopped them, but not before they said tens of thousands of dollars in retirement benefits meant for firefighters were siphoned away.<\/p>\n
The board wants the money back and filed a civil complaint in Lackawanna County Court to recoup nearly $130,000, which they said covers the amount Bouton stole and the earnings the pension fund lost from not having that money invested.<\/p>\n
Attempts to reach Bouton were unsuccessful.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Bouton never responded to the suit and the county clerk of judicial records ordered on Jan. 12 that she pay back $126,520.56.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Now, she\u2019s also facing criminal charges.<\/p>\n
\u201c(The pension fund) is a combination of taxpayer funds and contributions from, in this case, firefighters,\u201d said attorney Larry Durkin, the solicitor of the firefighter pension board. \u201cSo any misapplication of pension funds is a is a very serious issue.\u201d<\/p>\n
Bouton\u2019s father, Robert Matticks, was a city firefighter from Feb. 16, 1964 through Aug. 15, 1998 and started collecting a bi-monthly pension once he retired.<\/p>\n
He collected that money until he died Dec. 7, 2013. His wife, Henrietta Matticks, was entitled to a survivor\u2019s benefit of up to 50% of her late husband\u2019s pension for the rest of her life.<\/p>\n
\u201cAnd then it stops at the death of the of the spouse,\u201d Durkin said.<\/p>\n
In this case, however, it didn\u2019t.<\/p>\n
Henrietta Matticks died on June 10, 2020, but direct deposits from the pension fund continued to flow into her Fidelity Bank account, which her daughter, Bouton, also could access.<\/p>\n
In its complaint, the pension board said that each direct deposit was accompanied by a physical letter that included a section titled \u201cdeath notification\u201d that stated, \u201cany payments made after my death were paid in error.\u201d That notice was mailed 113 times, the complaint stated, but the board said Bouton never gave notice her mother was dead.<\/p>\n
Bouton closed the Fidelity Bank account on Feb. 28, 2025. The next direct deposit from the pension fund was rejected, prompting the bank to issue a paper check to Henrietta Matticks.<\/p>\n
Copies of the checks show they were endorsed with the signatures of Matticks \u2014 then dead for nearly five years \u2014 and Bouton. The police said the checks were cashed at a Wells Fargo account held by Bouton.<\/p>\n
The payments halted by the end of summer last year. A member of the pension board reviewed the fund\u2019s current payees in September and discovered that they were paying Henrietta Matticks, who he knew was dead.<\/p>\n
The board\u2019s president, Gary DeStefano, was notified and the payments ceased. The board also reached out to the Scranton police for a criminal investigation, which culminated in a warrant for Bouton’s arrest Wednesday.<\/p>\n
At its meeting in January, pension board member Joan Hodowanitz questioned if there is a better way to keep track of when a retiree dies. Durkin said that the city is looking into options but there is no good process, according to minutes of the meeting.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe pension board is investigating other ways to monitor the fund to ensure nothing like this happens again,\u201d DeStefano told Newswatch 16.<\/p>\n
There are approximately 400 payees receiving pension benefits, Durkin said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A late firefighter’s daughter collected tens of thousands of dollars in survivor’s benefits long after the payments should…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":123384,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[178,180,179],"class_list":["post-123383","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-scranton","tag-scranton","tag-scranton-headlines","tag-scranton-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/123383","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=123383"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/123383\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/123384"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=123383"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=123383"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=123383"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}