County auditors presented the results of an internal investigation to the Commissioners Court and said improvements have been implemented.
Nearly $700,000 was stolen from Dallas County jail inmate commissary accounts in a scheme involving damaged debit cards, the county auditor said. Now, the investigation has been turned over to the FBI.
County auditors presented the results of an internal investigation to the Commissioners Court on Tuesday that showed operational loopholes allowed an employee to produce debit cards from an inmate trust fund. The problems they found in their audit have been fixed through new oversight, they said.
Without providing details, the Dallas County Sheriff’s Department said in April that it had arrested former clerk Umeka Myers and charged her with property theft. Department spokesman Raul Reyna said Tuesday the arrest was connected to the case but did not provide additional details, saying the federal investigation continues.
Myers was released in lieu of $5,000 bail in April and is awaiting trial. The sheriff’s department said she was fired after her arrest.
Inmates at the Dallas County jail are allowed access to commissary money through a trust fund operated by the sheriff’s department. Families and friends of inmates can send money to the commissary accounts for meals and other items. When inmates are released from the jail, they are issued debit cards with the remaining balance.
The Dallas Morning News obtained a copy of the county’s audit, which reviewed transactions from January 2015 through March 2021. The report found that 306 debit cards totaling nearly $700,000 were issued from inmate accounts that had been closed, exceeding the department’s trust fund balance. The sheriff’s department commissary fund was over-drafted by more than $85,000 in March 2020, prompting the audit.
The report also found:
- There were no procedures for refunding and disposing of damaged debit cards.
- The department didn’t monitor money going in or out of the commissary account.
- Clerks improperly used $4,449 from the trust fund to pay for inmate transportation when there was insufficient money in a separate account for that specific purpose.
- No checks were in place to prevent clerks or supervisors from activating closed accounts from inmates who had been released from jail.
- Sheriff’s department staff were not properly trained in the third-party system that operates the inmate commissary accounts.
- No changes were implemented even after previous audits of the sheriff’s department had identified issues, including closed inmate accounts with negative balances.
‘Needle in a haystack’
According to the audit, the system that controls those accounts and produces the debit cards is designed by an external vendor, Keefe Commissary Network, which has refunded $97,390 of the stolen funds. The county’s inmate trust fund has not completely been restored.
The special investigations unit of the sheriff’s department has looked into the case, Sheriff Marian Brown said at Tuesday’s Commissioners Court meeting, and it has since been passed to the FBI.
“There are some criminal elements involved,” said Brown, who was appointed sheriff at the end of 2017. “We have been able to determine as far back as 2016 when instances were happening.”
Previous reviews, the most recent county auditor’s investigation found, had discovered problems that could have identified the scheme earlier, but the sheriff’s department didn’t take any action. County Auditor Darryl Thomas said that regular audits do not check for fraud.
When the sheriff’s department’s chief financial officer, Daniel Simon, caught the potential issue, the auditor’s office conducted a more thorough investigation.
“It was really searching for a needle in a haystack,” the county auditor said. “Even though the dollar amounts are large, we had to figure out how did it transpire.”
Thomas said measures had been in place to prevent fraud but the people hired to run the commissary system were not properly trained to implement those precautions.
For example, Thomas said, if an inmate left the jail with $1,000 on a card, and he was supposed to have more money in the account, the department’s CFO could authorize a change. At some point, Thomas said, that policy was altered so supervisors and clerks could reopen closed inmate accounts and issue a new debit card.
The scheme’s perpetrator, Thomas said, was able to issue additional debit cards for the same amount that the inmate had received. The released inmate would still get his or her money, but the system would charge the county’s account twice.
When auditors realized those double charges, Thomas said, they were able to quickly identify hundreds of fraudulent debit cards. He said investigators tracked those cards to individual banks where they were used.
“We had to catch the person on camera,” Thomas said, “and it was hard.”
More oversight
Commissioner John Wiley Price, who monitors the sheriff’s department for the court, led a presentation on the audit’s findings Tuesday. He said Brown, who has been sheriff for four years, and her current staff are not to blame. The problem carried over from previous administrations, he said, but he did not provide more details.
“This sheriff inherited this,” Price said. “This didn’t happen in one year, this didn’t happen in two years. It appears as though, from the audit, this has been ongoing.”
Price said the issues raised by the audit have been resolved by new policies.
For example, there was no policy to properly dispose of damaged or destroyed debit cards. Clerks were able to reactivate cards that had been set aside because they were damaged. Now, according to the auditor’s report, there’s a written policy for monitoring, storing and destroying damaged debit cards.
“All of the points that have been articulated in the report have been addressed,” Sheriff Brown said. “There’s more oversight now. That was not the case previously.”
