State Auditor Shad White issued the following statement.
Today State Auditor Shad White announced that Special Agents from his office have arrested Dana Jones, former Prentiss City Clerk, for allegedly embezzling public funds from the City of Prentiss during her time as City Clerk.
Jones allegedly pocketed $469,031 for her own personal use by adding unauthorized paychecks and overtime payments to her salary. She also allegedly used city funds to make credit card payments on debt she owed. Additionally, Jones drafted checks made payable to herself and deposited those checks into her personal bank account.
“Every dollar stolen from taxpayers is a dollar that could have gone to paving roads, paying our teachers and cops more, or to tax cuts,” said State Auditor Shad White. “We will continue to do everything in our power to recover misspent money for taxpayers.”
Jones faces up to $175,000 in fines and 205 years in prison if convicted. All persons arrested by the Mississippi Office of the State Auditor are innocent until proven guilty in a court of law.



45 comments:
Everybody's doing it - until they all get busted.
The cookie-jar remains open, in every municipality and county office in this state. Why doesn't Shad develop, publicize and provide training in a fail-safe method to stop this crap?
Well, that's not his job, you might say. Remember...half of what he does is not in his job description but is a coin in his fountain of gubernatorial election.
I wonder if her family will put this latest photo of their Mam-Maw on the fireplace mantel ?
The fail safe method would require elected and appointed officials to be able to read and comprehend generally accepted written policies and procedures regarding accounting and fund handling , and that is where this solution begins to fall short of The 'Sips reality.
This won't stop until mandatory jail time is increased.
Is there a municipality in the entire state that has common cash controls and checks and balances. Maybe we should start putting these clerks' bosses in jail for complicit negligence.
Maybe she should have run for governor. Right, Feel?
If she took that much then she should be debt free.
Do you think Shad White can provide some 'fail-safe' training in honesty?
I bet @254 also believes in the efficacy of "gun control" laws.
Shad could write a book on fraaaauuu....Wait, he's done that already.
Why don’t you ask Jody Owens, Lynn Fitch, or the DOJ why they never indicted Phil? Shad doesn’t prosecute anything he just turns over the evidence uncovered during his investigations.
there are 82 counties in mississippi and about 200 municipalities.
that means there are about 280 ways of doing things. there is next to no uniformity in this state. county and city governments are total chaos. thats why people get away with this so often.
Andy Gipson wears a hat, Shad White wears scalps.
Surely this woman has read about all the others before her that got caught doing this. Cautionary tales abound and yet she did it anyway.
Shad if you just had a hot line for criminal wrong doings in these hick counties you’d have to hire 100 more investigators. These mo fo’s are off the chain!
400k get arrested. 96 million aided by an accounting professor jeweler, no arrest.
$400k ... oh wait Karen is white so lets not make a big fuss like the ninjas
My mama always told us not ever do anything to embarrass our family name. We were just nobodies and were poor. She said it didn't matter our name meant something. But she would have whipped our a** if we had even thrown a tantrum in the grocery store. No more mamas like that I guess. I feel sad for this woman's family.
Prentiss - population 911. $400,000 is a lot of money. Median household income was $32,123 in 2024 and per capita $21,543.
Another day at the office in Mississippi.
Damn, how much makeup and salon time would $400,000 buy? She sure didn't spend it on fixing up.
Mammaw going to be able to hone her cooking craft in the prison kitchen.
.....but she's a good Christian woman!
Says in article, she faces up to 205 years in prison! Jody Owens facing 5 years in prison…I’m kinda slow, can someone make that make sense?
Who was auditing the books
Several thoughts.
After Operation Pretense in the 1980s brought down some county supervisors due to kickbacks the state should have enacted legislation to mandate the unit system in all 82 counties, with a county administrator appointed by each county’s Board of Supervisors. Many if not most of the counties that have maintained a beat system of its supervisor districts are rural, are not an efficient use of resources, and if you drive country roads in a beat county you will encounter more poorly maintained roads than in counties that operate on the unit system with a county administrator. That’s just one example of issues with the beat system. Taxpayers in beat counties deserve better.
On this latest arrest, I can’t help but wonder if gambling addictions might be motivating these embezzlements. The last time I was at Beau Rivage I was playing a penny slot machine next to a woman who did not look like someone with an unlimited bankroll, yet I watched her put at least three separate vouchers worth several thousand dollars each into the same machine and she was max betting $10 each spin. It was crazy the amount of money she was spending, just nonchalantly pulling vouchers out of her purse. I kid you not, my thought was either this woman won a jackpot previously or she might be someone I eventually will see in an embezzlement case.
I’m glad to see someone else thinks it’s interesting an accounting professor has a connection to the people involved in the credit union case. Speaking of accounting professors., USM accounting professor James Crockett wrote an excellent book on Operation Pretense.
I have to wonder how many of these STEALING CASCADES start, when someone has a relative with giant cancer treatment bills, or a kid who needs detox. Does the thinking go: "I'll keep goin', 'til I get caught. And then I'll kill myself."?
But maybe they get arrested, before they've figured-out how to do it. Or, maybe, it's harder to make that final decision, than they'd realized. And so, here they are.
I know families who're now "Cancer Poor" - no futures - everything gone, and even more families who've been ruined by little Dylan or Deystini's detox stays: retirement savings gone; investment properties sold; insurance policies lapsed; roofs rotting; no college funds for the other kids; threadbare tires...
Shad White's never-ending lineup of pitiful, broken-down old women who've embezzled (for whatever reasons), is making Canada's Euthanasia Program look like a wonderful solution to the financial no-win situations so many people are finding themselves in.
Forgive me, if I PRAY FOR these women, instead of judging them.
8:35 AM, reasoning like this is why we keep having crime like this. I see the same excuses every time we have a capital murder case . "oh, i bet that poor murdering boy/girl just had a bad home life. Please forgive him instead of the alternative punishment.". I'm all for prayer and Christian life, but your strategy is suicidal empathy.
"400k get arrested. 96 million aided by an accounting professor jeweler, no arrest." ----- RIGHT !!!!!!?????????????????????????????
I'll put it in another, even-scarier perspective. The other day, a contributor to 'Lioness of Judah' (an Evangelical-oriented Substack), was describing what amounts to the protracted torture-murder of a special needs girl, during the "medical crisis" of the past few years.
The hospital presented a bill to her Insuror, for her 41-day stay, of well over $600,000.00. The only thing limiting the sadism of her treatment, was the relative lack of it. This very-young woman had pressure wounds on her FACE. She would have had to have been ignored for entire shifts - maybe multiple shifts - for that to happen. Yet, still, 15-k-per-day - half the Yearly Median Household Income you listed, above - for her to lie, unattended and denied fluids. FIFTEEN THOU, EVERY DAY.
That's how out-of-whack things are, right now. And so, I'm having to wonder whether this woman wasn't applying the money she was stealing, to some crazy-expensive/no-way-out situation.
Nice point, 9:08. EXCELLENT point!
You see more & more fraud & stealing by peoples since Mississippi put the state lottery into effect.
I saw the stealing by peoples get out of control since Mississippi got the electricity in peoples houses!
I'll never forget moving here and learning I had to buy a culvert for our driveway from the County supervisor! Who knows if the county got it or not. I thought it odd the check was to be made to him.
Everywhere else in the country I'd lived, I only paid county taxes. I didn't even know there was a separate county " board" anywhere. We had A county clerk who was like a local state person for licenses and tax payments. With a larger population than that MS county when I arrived, one clerk and her secretaries did everything. And, this was when only universities had computers and they took up a very large space!
No one we elect should be allowed to run for office or be appointed before taking a test on what the job/position says he can and can't do!
8:13 am here with another thought/question.
If this city clerk initiated unauthorized paychecks and overtime payments to herself, did those payments impact reported PERS contributions, that is, if Prentiss as a municipality participates in PERS of Mississippi?
And casinos. But with serious palm greasing they were welcomed with open arms.
clicking the "like" button.
That's not low hanging.
Same here 5:59. Grew up dirt poor but we did not take welfare, we worked and grew food in a garden. I was taught to have pride and even if you don't have expensive things, take care of the cheap things you have. Take pride in your name and your belongings.
I fear that attitude is extinct for the most part.
11:54 - you beat me to the punch on this, but Shad has still given the Leflore County Supervisors a pass. I want to see what pictures they have.
I recall through my 25 years as a LEO in a small municipality the yearly audits conducted by an outside CPA firm. It was a pain in the ass, but very thorough. Went as far as locating in validating all equipment and employees having to sign in with identification to verify that there were no ghost employees. I thought this was a state law that applied to all municipalities, but apparently not or at least the audit firm was blind in this case.
Kingfish or anybody else, can you advise?
Do these people not read the news and see all of the busts of this nature that are going on all over the place? Too brazen I guess.
Standard terms of engagement for a typical government entity audit exclude searching for and finding fraud.
If someone wants an auditor to be fairly certain any fraudulent transactions are found that requires a forensic audit and they are expensive.
Who did their yearly audit
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