A weekly newspaper in Oregon abruptly stopped publishing and laid off all of its workers after an employee embezzled tens of thousands of dollars and left months of bills unpaid, its editor said.

The newspaper, The Eugene Weekly, announced on Thursday that it would stop printing after it discovered financial problems, including money not being paid into employee retirement accounts and $70,000 of unpaid bills to the newspaper’s printer, Camilla Mortensen, the newspaper’s editor, said on Sunday.

The entire 10-person newspaper staff was laid off three days before Christmas, though some workers, including Mortensen, were still volunteering to publish articles online.

The Eugene Weekly, a free newspaper, was founded in 1982 and each week prints 30,000 copies, which can be found in bright red boxes in and around Eugene, one of the most populous cities in Oregon.

Leaders of The Eugene Weekly said in a letter to readers that the newspaper’s finances had been left in “shambles”, but they planned to fight to keep the publication alive.

“The damage is more than most small businesses can bear,” the letter said. “The scale of this moment is unlike anything we have ever faced. But we believe in this newspaper’s mission and we remain determined to keep EW alive.”

Melinda McLaughlin, a spokesperson for the Eugene Police Department, said that the police were investigating but could not provide more details while the inquiry was underway. The now-former employee accused of the embezzlement, who was involved in the newspaper’s finances, was not publicly identified.

Mortensen, who joined the paper in 2007 and became editor in 2016, said that charges had been filed against the person accused of embezzlement, who had worked there for at least five years.

The employee was out of the office early in December when questions arose about closing the financial records for the year and suddenly a host of problems were made apparent, Mortensen said.

“Every time I find something out, I just get sick to my stomach,” she said. “And again, this is someone we worked with who came to the office every day.” The Eugene Weekly is accepting donations to help it publish again.

New York Times News Service