Audit  Audit of the Worcester County District Attorney’s Office

In accordance with Section 12 of Chapter 11 of the Massachusetts General Laws, the Office of the State Auditor has conducted a performance audit of certain activities of the Worcester County District Attorney’s Office (WCDA) for the period July 1, 2019 through June 30, 2021. When reviewing updates to its internal control plan (ICP), we examined WCDA’s most recent ICP as of the time of our fieldwork, which was dated March 2022.

The purpose of our audit was to determine the following:

• whether forfeited fund expenditures were made in compliance with Section 47(d) of Chapter 94C of the General Laws,
• whether confiscated and forfeited funds¹ were tracked and processed in accordance with WCDA’s “Fiscal Policy and Procedures,”
• whether WCDA complied with the Office of the Comptroller of the Commonwealth’s guidance by updating its ICP to address risks related to the 2019 coronavirus pandemic, and
• whether WCDA employees completed cybersecurity awareness training in accordance with Sections 6.2.3 and 6.2.4 of the Executive Office of Technology Services and Security’s (EOTSS’s) Information Security Risk Management Standard IS.010.

Below is a summary of our finding and recommendations, with links to each page listed.

1.    Funds initially seized by law enforcement agencies are considered confiscated until they are ultimately declared forfeited by a court order.