It seems like every day we read about politicians doing whatever they can to get more of your money and spend it on nonsense. That’s one reason why I love being State Auditor—it’s one of the only positions in government that can give money BACK to the taxpayers instead of taking it.
That’s exactly what we did this year with the release of our annual “Exceptions Report,” which details every case of misspending of public funds over the last year. I’m proud to say that during this past year, my office returned over $900,000 back to taxpayers. My office has a zero-tolerance policy for theft of taxpayer dollars. It doesn’t matter who you are, how well-connected you are, or how rich and powerful you might be—if you steal from the taxpayers, we’re going to hold you accountable. And then we’ll post your mugshot on social media for everyone to see when you get convicted. My office has also found a lot of folks who have tried to get away with unemployment fraud. During the COVID-19 pandemic, unemployment fraud grew to record highs. As a result of this, my office launched Operation Payback, a detailed investigation using data analytics to look into unemployment compensation fraud. My office found that during COVID, Mississippi handed out over half a billion dollars in illegal unemployment payments. One example of this came from Hinds County inmate Kenjarell Thomas. Inmates are not eligible for unemployment compensation, but that didn’t stop Thomas. While in prison, Thomas allegedly applied for unemployment benefits using multiple other prisoners’ personal information and his mother’s address to receive the payments. These actions resulted in Thomas being served with a 59-count indictment. Another case of unemployment fraud that we handled involved siblings Thaddieus Cooper and Artista Garner. Cooper was incarcerated and therefore ineligible to receive unemployment benefits. But Cooper allegedly had his sister, Artista Garner, fill out the unemployment application for him while he was incarcerated. Cooper received the benefits not long after, and Garner used this money for her own personal gain. We took our findings to prosecutors and both siblings ended up pleading guilty in federal court for COVID relief fraud. I love being State Auditor because we get the opportunity to help hold criminals accountable for stealing your tax dollars. The frustrating part, however, is that we don’t have the power to prosecute our cases in court. We have to take our findings to a prosecutor, and they make the decision about whether to charge someone with a crime. We’re lucky to be able to partner with so many talented and hard-working prosecutors around the state and on the federal level. While not all of them take our cases, the ones that do are true public servants helping us protect your taxpayer dollars. My office will continue to serve as your watchdog to ensure that tax dollars are protected. We’ll keep bringing our findings to prosecutors and we’ll keep posting the mug shots of criminals for everyone to see. We’ll keep being aggressive with our findings, regardless of who it upsets. We believe the taxpayers of Mississippi deserve no less. As a final word, I want to thank you for letting me hold this position. My wife and I have three kids at home, ages 6, 3, and 2. Every day I go to work at a job where I can make our beloved Mississippi a little bit better for them. Every dollar we collect is another dollar that can go to tax cuts, teacher salaries, police salaries, or roads—the things that make our state stronger. And I will continue working just as hard to collect misspent taxpayer money as you worked to earn that money in the first place. Shad White is the 42 nd State Auditor of Mississippi.This post is a paid advertisement.
