"Pagano's motives unknown"

So says the headline on Page 1A of the Northwest Herald this morning. There was room for one more word: "yet".

Follow the money. How often have we heard that?

A million dollars don't just disappear. And I guess I'll question the use of the words "skimmed from the agency" (Metra). So far it appears that he improperly withdrew money by taking advances on vacation pay and from his retirement account, but is that "skimming"?

News reports from all sources are thin on whether Pagano actually worked through vacation periods for which he had taken advances. Come on, reporters. How about some details?

Good business practice at Metra, of course, would have been to require an employee to work through his vacation period and then pay him for his unused vacation time at the end of the year, if the Employee Manual permitted that. Apparently, no one had the backbone to stand up to him, until recently when he was questioned about it.

Re-sorting the information in the Northwest Herald to a logical order reveals a pattern in home refinancing not immediately clear in the article.

1989 original mortgage $177,000
August 1999 $250,000 re-fi
August 2002 $306,590 re-fi
July 2005 $319,500 15-year mortgage
October 2006 $364,387 re-fi, 20-year mortgage
February 2007 $389,687 30-year mortgage

Where did all the money go? And, if he withdrew from his retirement account but paid it back (except for $127,000), where did the money come from to pay it back?

Dig, boys, dig...