OK that’s just bad auditing. The first things you look at when auditing an accounts payable department are the void checks, the stale dated checks, and the account reallocations. Every one of those represents a problem of some sort so you want to look for patterns. This is a public entity so they should have been subject to regular audits. Somebody needs to lose their job for missing this.
Phar-Mor, Enron, etc.
I’m curious why she had check signing authority.