Cheri Logue had a lot of unpaid credit card and other bills. To pay them off, she stole from the law firm at which she worked. Logue, a secretary-bookkeeper for Southwestern Pennsylvania Legal Services Inc. (SPLS), pleaded guilty in Pittsburgh federal court on Tuesday, April 27 to embezzling slightly over $188,000 over about three years from the federally-funded law group based in Washington, Pa. She faces sentencing on August 27. A member of the SPLS board of directors, Chris Blackwell, said that she has paid back all of the money, a fact that might keep her out of prison.
Misuse of Legal Services Corporation funds is nothing new. The most publicized cases typically involve lawsuits by affiliated nonprofit legal groups that run contrary to the LSC charter. Recent months, however, have witnessed a different kind of problem: use of public money for private pleasure. New reports by the Government Accountability Office (GAO) and the LSC Office of Inspector General, plus 
