LUCERNE — The Lake County District Attorney”s office served a search warrant on the residence of Rowland Mosser, 63, of Lucerne Wednesday morning to seize a laptop, desktop computer and documents in an ongoing investigation spurred by allegations of embezzlement. Mosser has not been charged with any crime at this point, DA Jon Hopkins said. The investigation began in 2004, headed by the Lake County Sheriff”s Department before the DA”s office took it over in March of last year.
The allegations come from individuals associated with the Lucerne Alpine Senior Center, where Mosser was hired in 2003 to serve as executive director. Those parties allege Mosser stole money from the center, which Mosser denies.
Lee Tyree, the current executive director said the news that Mosser”s home had been served a search warrant was “a really big thing” and that “when he is taken in on this the angels will be dancing in heaven.” She said there was crime scene tape surrounding Mosser”s home as officials seized information for the investigation at 8 a.m.
Tyree said Mosser was asked to leave by the center”s nine member board in August 2005. The current members are all new, none having had the experience of serving on the board that had been in place during Mosser”s senior center career, Tyree said.
Hopkins said he wanted to emphasize the allegations are coming from people outside the DA”s office, and are not official. “No charges have been filed alleging anything; there was a request on our part to have a judge sign a search warrant so we could determine if there was any evidence that would assist us as to whether funds were embezzled from the Lucerne Senior Center,” Hopkins said.
“We”re not going to release any details of this in-progress investigation at this point, so what we want to do is finish the investigation and determine whether any further steps will be taken,” Hopkins said.
Mosser stood outside of his dilapidated, red-tagged home Wednesday afternoon and said he never stole any money from the senior center.
“These (allegations) are coming from a few?it”s a character assassination,” said Mosser”s wife, Jayne.
“I never stole any money. I don”t even know how much money they say I stole. When I first took the job, they hadn”t done an audit in four years. I did an audit for 02-04 and they still needed to do another audit when I left?I offered to pay for an additional audit when this first came up in 2004, if they had accepted it, it would have all been cleared up,” Mosser said.
He said a possible cause for the allegations could stem from enemies he made during his employment. “I made a few enemies?the whole social club of 10-12 people turned against me,” Mosser said.
He said the reason was that two former employees were upset with their non-employment status at the center; one of whom had quit for personal reasons and whom Mosser did not hire back. The other employee became disgruntled because her senior work program employment at the center had expired, Mosser said.
Contact Elizabeth Wilson at ewilson@record-bee.com.
