A Medical College of Georgia employee was arrested today and charged with taking gift cards intended for families involved in a research study, the school announced.
Research assistant Natalie Murphy was charged with four counts of felony forgery of the first degree. She has been suspended without pay pending the outcome of those charges, the school said.
Murphy, who has been at MCG since October 2008, was working on a diabetes study for the Georgia Prevention Institute at MCG. She is accused of taking eight $25 gift cards meant to compensate families for home visits that are part of the study.
"She stopped doing the visits and just forged the people's name to the receipts and then used the gift cards," said Eugene Maxwell, assistant chief of police for operations for MCG Police. Murphy then moved to another job in academic affairs at MCG School of Medicine and the person who took over for her found some discrepancies, Maxwell said. The investigation is ongoing and it is possible additional charges could be filed, he said.
The school is planning to scrap data from those visits so that they do not compromise the integrity of the study.
Reach Tom Corwin at (706) 823-3213
or tom.corwin@augustachronicle.com.
No under the Obama plan, it would not be illegal to take these gift cards, as long she was working for a government agency. However, if she was employed by a private firm, it would be a high crime.
What a loser. She's not the only thief at MCG though that's for sure!
This is what our medical reporter writes about when we have all the other news???? Corwin seems to enjoy the LPN duties and stays away from controversy.
Plenty of easy money to be had at MCG, but this ain't it!
Obamination don't stand a chance with you lovers either, once you wake up and figure out what's going to happen to you and to your young 'uns.
Notreally: Sort of sucks to be at the top now, huh? Kind of lousy to hear all the horrible comments about your leader (he's for sure not mine). Let's put it this way: I will show YOUR president the same respect that you showed mine. In regards to this story, look on the bright side....there is a job opening at MCG.
Remember when we had Ronald Reagan? We also had Bob Hope and Johnny Cash. Now we have Obama, NO hope and NO cash.
What an idiot. to lose your job over something so pety. jobs are hard to come by and apparently this dummy did not want hers. i guess now she will go apply for public housing, welfare, food stamps and whatever free stuff comes along with that. you see i would not know because i have been blessed enough to have never been on any of that stuff before.
Would the use of financial gifts adversely affect the results of a medical study? Some people may have a desire to show their support for the institution by not complaining or being totally truthful, in anticipation of future gifts. Just part of being a good patient or something to some people means not complaining. Just seems strange.
The data is now flawed because they don't know if she collected the data appropriately.
disssman, did you read this article? The misuse of the gift cards wasn't what may have skewed the study. The theif's job was to gather information from home visits and the cards were compensation to the families for their time during these visits. (now here comes the difficult deduction part) If the wise Ms Murphy was forging and spending the gift cards, she may have not been actually making visits and gathering the information (or the family may have complained about not receiving the card). With no way of knowing, the MCG has plans to scrap the information from those eight visits. (this is where the light of understanding comes on)
what in the world does obama have to do with theft at mcg?!?!?!? it's one thing to criticize obama, bush clinton, or reagan on issues of national policy or political ideology but to attempt to tie obama to employee theft at mcg is just plain idiotic......with all due respect those who (either like or dislike the president and his philosophies) post rants attempting to do so get over it, for better or worse he is the president so you might as well accept it, even though at time it could be difficult, probably because he is black
The data is flawed if she didn't take the exams to the participants. Some she did, some she did not. Hopefully, the flawed data can be removed without having to jettison the entire study. Its a shame to get a felony charge over 8 gift cards. I mean, if you are going to do it, take a thousand of them, not 8.
$200.00 does not qualify as a felony. The forgery charges are felony charges. If she gets a good criminal defense attorney, he will have the charges reduced to theft by taking, she will be charged with the misdemeanor charge of Theft by taking-$200, she will get probation, be sentnenced under the first offender status, and a few years from now no one will ever know.
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