Woman accused of stealing from inmate accounts

A former Cook County Jail employee has been charged with stealing more than $370,000 from inmates' commissary accounts.

Sixty-one-year-old Elizabeth Hudson was arrested at her home on Chicago's South Side earlier this week. The Cook County Sheriff's office says an investigation involving a series of audits showed that between Sept. 2004 and June 2008, Hudson had allegedly been taking money from accounts set up for inmates.

Hudson id charged with one count of theft of governmental property over $100,000, one felony count of theft over $100,000 and one felony count of official misconduct.

Hudson had been employed at the jail for more than 15 years and had been the supervisor in the jail's Inmate Trust Department, where she set up commissary accounts for the inmates.

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