Freeport EMS fires whistleblower

Freeport EMS fired the executive director who found financial irregularities revealing an almost $100,000 misappropriation tied to a former EMS treasurer.

The EMS board fired Chris O’Leath earlier this month, Mayor Jim Swartz confirmed.

O’Leath, who also serves as a firefighter in Arnold, was given access to the EMS’s finances in 2020 and found bookkeeping irregularities and notified the board.

He and the board audited the books and found 62 unauthorized transactions totaling nearly $98,000 from January 2017 to May 2020, according to a letter from O’Leath to the Tribune-Review in late 2021.

O’Leath declined to comment on his termination.

However, Swartz said of O’Leath’s firing: “I don’t care if you’re a director, you still have bosses and when you are told to do things, you do things.”

O’Leath’s attorney, Frank Rapp of Meyer, Unkovic & Scott in Pittsburgh, said he and O’Leath are looking at legal options.

O’Leath’s departure and the exodus of two employees didn’t impact operations of the EMS service, said Swartz, who is a trustee for Freeport EMS.

The new EMS executive director, Gary Bittner, said he and board members had no comment on O’Leath’s termination. In the 2021 letter to the Tribune-Review, O’Leath accused Justin DeAngelis, then a former treasurer of the EMS and Freeport Volunteer Fire Department, of stealing nearly $98,000 and then repaying the ambulance service.

DeAngelis resigned from borough council in late December. He could not be reached for this report.

State Trooper Anthony Vaccaro confirmed that his investigation is continuing. He is waiting for the results from a third-party forensic audit of the EMS’s books, he said.