State Beancounter Shadrack White issued the following statement.
Today
State Auditor Shad White announced former Coffeeville School District
Superintendent Vivian Robinson and co-conspirators Melissa Nance and
Tammy Briggs have been arrested on charges of fraudulent
statements/representations,
conspiracy, and obtaining an object of value with intent to defraud.
The
trio is accused of creating a business for educational consulting.
Robinson authorized payments to the fraudulent business while minimal
services were performed in order to appear as a legitimate
company. The three are accused of working together to draw nearly
$45,000 from the Coffeeville School District. (Sounds like MDE: KF)
The scheme was discovered during an audit conducted by the Office of the State Auditor’s Compliance Audit Division.
“For
the second time in a month, we’ve identified money that should have
benefitted public school students that was misspent,” said Auditor Shad
White. “We will work with prosecutors in this case
to protect the interests of those students and the taxpayers.”
The
Gulfport Police Department, Harrison County Sheriff’s Department, and
Yalobusha County Sheriff’s Department assisted with bringing these
individuals into custody.
Upon
their arrest, the defendants were served with demand letters showing
they owe $84,171.06 back to taxpayers. The amount includes interest and
investigative expenses.
All
persons arrested by the Mississippi Office of the State Auditor are
presumed innocent until proven guilty in a court of law. These
individuals will be prosecuted by the office of District Attorney
John W. Champion.
A $100,000 surety bond covers the employment of Robinson as the Superintendent of Coffeeville School District. No surety bond covers Nance or Briggs. Surety bonds are similar to insurance designed to protect taxpayers in the event that public money is misspent. All three will remain liable for the full amounts of their demands in addition to individual criminal charges.
32 comments:
Where is the audit of all Hinds County government boy wonder Shad??? Where is the audit of the former Guv and your predecessor???
Ever since Auditor Shad announced Deputy Phil was the whistleblower their big expose the crooks and liars thing has been off tha hook!
In addition to Hinds County how about:
Jackson Public Schools
City of Jackson
MS Department of Higher Education
IHL?
$45,000 may not seem like a lot, but in terms of Coffeeville money that's approx. $1B USD.
why does the tiny ass town of coffeeville have its own school district?
What is the MS Dept. of Higher Education? I think that is the IHL.
It’s just too damn hard for shad to do anything about the Hinds County school system or the Board of Supervisors for Hinds county it just seems to me that Hinds county is off-limits to shad.
@1:13 The last time I checked a few years ago there were 151 of these little kingdoms scattered over the state.
What does the Gulfport Police and Harrison County Sheriffs Dept have to do with this??
Another hick in the sticks that Shad ain’t afraid to go after, but IGNORES Phil and Hinds Co. Coward! People will remember this when you run for higher office
@2:37 Nicer casinos than Tunica.
I’m confused. Did something go down at one of those Gulf Coast (casino) “conferences? Otherwise, why on earth are Gulfport PD and HCSO involved? Isn’t Coffeeville somewhere between Oxford and Memphis?
The bare essentials of research and editing have been cast to the wind in the instant access era. Folks like @2:37 and myself get hung up on what GPD and HCSD have to do with Coffeeville School District. It took me a 15 second google to resolve the matter. Sure, it’s a minor omission here, but more and more I see egregious misrepresentations in reporting.
Too many school districts in the State!
All these comernts that Suditor Shad should go after Phil, buy a clue!
Government isn't supposed to go after whistlebowers!
@4:38pm "Government isn't supposed to go after whistleblowers!" That's what Phil and Shad fully discussed before Phil took that stance. Wink. Nod. Smile.
If Anna Wolfe can request through FOIA all of Phil's texts, etc. then the dang State Auditor should have the in-house power to request EVERYBODY's texts in Mississippi government for the last 10 years...one would think.
Do any of you still really believe that Phil Bryant is the whistleblower?!
Yall keep mentioning Phil Bryant and Hinds County in the same sentence. Over and over and over. Love it.
Has Shad EVER given credit to the actual people doing the work on these cases? He acts like its a one man investigative unit, which is laughable because all he does is speaking engagements and press conferences.
Some of us don’t use Google due to tracking purposes. But why can’t we have an explanation instead of having to Google? 30 or 40 years ago we didn’t have to rely on Google to fill in the blanks
All of the past state auditors have a horrible reputation. Patterson, Bryant, Pickering. Shad is certainly keeping the tradition going. Will never vote for ANY office Shad runs for in the future. Sincerely, a long term MS republican.
Certainly Shad playing around all day on Twitter and Facebook, in between his many Op-Ed pieces and Rotary Club visits wouldn’t be considered a good use of taxpayer dollars, right?
Shad isn’t worried about protecting taxpayer dollars. He’s worried about reputation and running for higher office.
Shadrack has never earned anything honest in his life. He’s too scared to look into the guy who appointed him and the kickback scheme and he’s too scared to audit the city of Jackson, or any other part of hinds county ‘government’ not to mention Jackson public schools which have been hemorrhaging student population over the last 10 years while the budgets keep going up and up. Grow some cohones shadrack and do your job. While you’re at it, give some credit to your people instead of trying to get your ugly face all over the news. You’re a political hack.
One of the ladies mentioned was living in Gulfport. That’s way the GPD and HCSO was involved.
@12:55 I agree! Methinks this was a scheme, help out their own cash flow, planned on using for many years. School money causes voter fraud, political hires, sad nobody cares much about our massive need in early education.
Educate me on this, Shockwave does nothing, Shad is proactive in trying to prosecute. Shad does give the team credit, I'm not saying he's not protecting Phil, but at least he's doing his job. And here's a bulletin for the 97%, we don't know what's brewing in his office.
It appears to me that Shad keeps a few cases at the ready to move on and release when he’s having a bad PR week. You can clearly see a pattern here with his announcements.
@7:09am Hi Shad!
As I've stated before, the law limits Shad investigating municipalities unless a complaint is filed. Know something on Jackson? Go file a complaint. If not, shut up. He can't just go rummaging in their books because he saw a news report about the garbage contract. As for the garbage contract, no money has yet been paid so he has no jurisdiction over that matter since there has been no injury.
Coffeeville School District is basically South Yalobusha, with Water Valley being North Yalobusha. There are no county schools. There aren't many people in Yalobusha County, but geographically it's pretty big and knowing how to get around that county, it makes sense to have two schools there.
"why does the tiny ass town of coffeeville have its own school district?"
Oh, prolly the same reason Aberdeen, Amory, McComb, Senatobia, Baldwin, Moss Point, Nettleton, new Albany, Canton, Petal and Enterprise do...whew, I ran out of breath. There are more.
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