A staff member in the assessor’s office had a “gut feeling” that something was amiss. “That’s how it was discovered,” Dunlap said. About the same time, someone in the collector of revenue’s office, which cuts the refund checks, thought it was strange that they were sending two checks to the same address.

They notified police and observed her for a time to make sure she was acting alone. When her bosses confronted her Dec. 14, she left the assessor’s office and didn’t come back, Dunlap said. She was fired that day.

“Thank God, it’s because of checks and balances in the system that caught this,” said Vollmer, the deputy collector of revenue.

The computer access she had, that allowed her to trigger the refunds, used to be given only to supervisors in the assessor’s office. However, in an effort to speed up customer service in response to complaints of long lines, the assessor’s office allowed additional employees to have the access codes to change information in the computer system, Vollmer said.

Because of the Oliver case, “it’s all been changed back,” Vollmer said. Now, only supervisors or managers have access, and two people have to verify changes in the computer.