Indicted former DSS employee was a 'hoarder,' serial online shopper

Lonna Carroll accused of stealing nearly $1.8 in government money

Lonna Carroll’s booking photo with the South Dakota Department of Corrections after she was extradited from Iowa.

PIERRE — People who worked around Lonna Carroll during her tenure at the South Dakota Department of Social Services had little insight on the former employee’s more than 10 years of work for the state.

As a “program assistant” — one former supervisor compared her day-to-day responsibilities to that of a secretary — Carroll kept a low profile through much of her first years, as she allegedly started an embezzlement scheme that pilfered nearly $2 million from the government entity she worked for.

But Carroll’s apartment, located just over a mile away from her office, tells a different story, and the one of where 10 years’ worth of federal and state money intended for children in the foster system possibly could have gone.

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