City Records Dept. worker charged in $600,000 fraud

A Philadelphia Records Department employee was charged today with defrauding the city of more than $600,000 in fees over four years while pocketing $185,000 in bribes, officials announced.

Employees at three area businesses are also charged with bribery in the case.

The U.S. Attorney's office and Philadelphia's Inspector General said Kelly Kaufmann Layre, a records department clerk in the police reports unit, gave thousands of incident accident and emergency medical reports to Tina Marie Meyrick, Paul Kling and Brian Daly at reduced cost in exchange for cash.

Meyrick, Kling and Daly either own or work for companies that provide such reports to law firms and others.

Layre, who was charged with soliciting a bribe, accepted cash of about $185,776 from the other three defendants between January 2006 and January 2010, the indictment said.

But she allegedly deprived the city of more than $600,000 because she charged less than the required amount for the reports.

Meyrick, of Hatboro; Kling, of Hatfield; and Daly, of Chalfont; were charged with bribery. None of the defendants was immediately available for comment. Layre, of Philadelphia, who started working for the city in 1997, resigned from her job in March.