Letter: More explanation needed in Carson City Sheriff's Office embezzlement case
Submitted by editor on Wed, 01/08/2014 - 9:00am
As an announced candidate for Carson City Sheriff I feel obligated to respond to the recently posted news article on Carson Now regarding a Sheriff’s office employee who allegedly embezzled money in the neighborhood of $100,000 dollars.
This reflects the lack of leadership on the current administration who is held responsible for all monies coming into and out of the Sheriff’s Office.
Although an elected official, the Sheriff is personally responsible for ensuring fiscal safeguards are in place to protect tax payer’s dollars.
If elected Sheriff I will have measures in place to safeguard against theft of tax payer’s money. I am deeply concerned how this criminal act was able to continue for several years according to the Carson Now news article without being detected. Like you, I am just as concerned why external audits over the years did not signal that money was missing.
In the Carson Now article, the Sheriff says the money did not come from the general fund, but instead from the “dark side” of public safety funding – money collected from drug transactions. I do not care where the money comes from and, in my opinion, all money in and out of the office is tax payer money. The Sheriff has an obligation to all Carson City citizens to have an accurate account of all monies.
Also in the Carson Now article the Sheriff says, “Even though she has been cooperative with us, she seriously damaged our (accounting) abilities and set back our abilities to operate for many months”. “It has been an enormous battle to recapture what these accounts should have been.” This type of statement from the Sheriff only solidifies my concerns with the accounting practices currently in place.
In addition I see a complete lack of transparency on the Sheriff's behalf if this investigation came about in August of 2013. Like you, I am concerned why the community was not notified that an employee of the office had been caught allegedly stealing money until almost four months later. Had I been the Sheriff, I would have notified the community about an alleged employee theft and told the community more information would come after the investigation was complete. Thank You
Don Gibson
Candidate Carson City Sheriff
