When Geoffrey Chang and other Kailua Elementary School parents took over the school's parent organization at the beginning of the school year, they discovered more than $10,000 was missing from the group's bank account.

Enlisting the help of certified fraud examiner Dirk Von Guenthner, the group tracked the stolen money back to the organization's previous president. She was arrested and later repaid the money.

Now Guenthner and members of the Kailua Parent Teacher Student Association are warning other parent groups to remain vigilant of their bank accounts. They're also asking for the help of the state Board of Education or other government agencies to create more financial procedures and controls of parent organizations.

"The difficult part, in the Kailua case, was there were no controls at the PTA at the time, no one to watch this lady and what she was doing," Guenthner said.

He's asking for help from state officials to give parent organizations proper guidance on how to account for their money and prevent accounting fraud.

Chang, the current treasurer of the Kailua parent group, said the group discovered the money was missing in July 2008 when new officers took over the organization. Accounting books said there should have been about $11,000 in the bank. But bank statements showed a balance of only $43.

"There was a sense of shock and disbelief that someone would take money or was able to take money to begin with," he said.

Guenthner's investigation led to the previous president, who was arrested in July. Michelle Yu, spokeswoman for the Honolulu Police Department, was unable to immediately confirm the woman's identity or whether she had been charged.

Both Guenthner and Chang did not want to reveal her name, saying she has repaid the money.

Valerie Sonoda, the president of the Hawaii State PTSA, did not immediately return phone calls yesterday.

Guenthner said what happened at Kailua Elementary last year was not an isolated incident. He knows of several cases where officers of parent organizations mismanaged or stole funds.

"For instance, there was a group doing a senior class party and when they got to the time the party was supposed to happen, the money was stolen," he said.

In a 2003 case, a woman was accused of stealing nearly $3,000 from a parent organization at a Pearl City school.

"These are hard times," Guenthner said. "You may have someone who just lost a job ... controlling a checkbook that has several thousand dollars in it. It's real easy to take advantage of that."

Guenthner and members of the Hawaii Chapter of the Association of Certified Fraud Examiners want to create a guidebook for PTAs to use. The book would include ways to prevent fraud from occurring.

Board of Education Vice Chairwoman Karen Knudsen said the board has limited jurisdiction over parent organizations at schools since they operate as nonprofit organizations.

But she said she would be willing to listen to any concerns parents or other groups have of the accounting methods being used by parent organizations.

"I personally wasn't aware that this was a widespread problem," Knudsen said.