SANTA CRUZ COUNTY, Ariz. (KGUN) — County treasurers have a duty to keep taxpayer money safe. For months, the former Santa Cruz County treasurer has been accused of embezzling more than $39 million in taxpayer money. Now, the Arizona Auditor General has released a report on how investigators believe it happened.

In a typical year, Santa Cruz County collects about $41 million in property taxes for the county, six school districts, community college and several taxing districts, according to the state auditor's report.

The report alleges that former Santa Cruz County Treasurer Elizabeth Gutfer received more than $39 million.

According to the state auditor, for more than a decade she concealed transfers to her personal account by lying on reports, lying to her staff, lying to the county supervisors and lying to the state auditor. The largest transfer last year came just before Chase Bank announced that they had discovered a $4.5 million wire transfer from the county treasurer's account to Gutfer's personal business account.

At that time, Gutfer resigned and an investigation was launched by the FBI, state and Santa Cruz County.

Gutfer's lawyer reportedly said she won't be speaking to them. No criminal charges have been filed, but Santa Cruz County is suing to try to recover money for county taxpayers. A judge has frozen most of her accounts for now to prevent her from hiding or selling assets.

According to the audit report, Gutphard convinced the chief deputy treasurer to give him the codes to access all of the department's accounts, allowing all six employees in the department to remain unaware of the fraud. He also gave gifts to employees and took out a $6,000 loan so the chief deputy treasurer could buy a new air conditioner. The chief deputy treasurer told investigators he planned to pay the money back after he left the company.

The report also cited roughly $3,000 worth of gifts, including paying for the chief deputy sheriff's personal cell phone and giving the chief deputy's sister the use of one of Gutfer's cars.

The audit office said Gutfer occasionally paid the bills of the department's senior secretary and gave the secretary a $1,500 birthday gift.

According to the report, the tax agents told investigators that Gutphul gave large gifts to his son's wedding, hosted his daughter's wedding at Gutphul's ranch and took the agents on long weekend getaways to San Marcos, Mexico.

Investigators also say Santa Cruz County supervisors didn't properly oversee the treasurer's office and missed obvious signs that something was wrong, including monthly cash balance reports that showed not a cent change for 14 months.