No criminal charges related to town hard drive

“After the investigation and reading the documentation … it’s the finding of my office that there is no criminal conduct. So, we have declined criminal charges.”

It has been more than a year since the Carbon County Sheriff’s Office seized a hard drive used by Saratoga Town Clerk Suzie Cox from Saratoga Town Hall.

On December 1, Carbon County Attorney Ashley Mayfield-Davis appeared before the Saratoga Town Council to inform them that the investigation into the hard drive was not only complete, but that her office would not file any criminal charges.

As was reported previously (see “Town council meeting cut short on page 1 of the October 9, 2019 Saratoga Sun), it was revealed following a truncated council meeting on October 1 that the hard drives had been confiscated. It was further revealed, as the Saratoga Sun spoke with council members, that what led to the confiscation began following a special meeting of the governing body on September 20.

“Based on some information the county attorney’s office received, and the sheriff’s office initially received, there was an investigation that started that was specific to finances of the Town of Saratoga,” said Mayfield-Davis. “Not necessarily specific individuals, however there was a computer, a hard drive, seized and pretty quickly copied so that the Town would have a copy of the hard drive and continue to function.”

That information came from Councilmember Jon Nelson, who made no secret about his visit with the Carbon County Sheriff’s Office and the Carbon County Attorney’s Office in an interview with the Sun following the October 1, 2019 council meeting. 

According to an affidavit filed by Deputy Tom Lakia on September 24, 2019 in Carbon County Circuit Court, Nelson had been informed by former mayor John Zeiger following the special meeting that Cox’s hard drive was about to crash. Nelson informed the Sun in that same interview that he had not requested the Sheriff’s Office confiscate Cox’s hard drive. This appears to be substantiated by the affidavit filed by Lakia.

“Through my training, knowledge and experience as a law enforcement officer, I know that documentation and financial tracking data is often retained electronically on a computer’s hard drive,” wrote Lakia. “I know through my training, knowledge and experience that this information which may be contained within emails, excel spreadsheets, Caselle, additional computer programs and/or documents can often be utilized for financial accounting, to determine where the finances for the Town of Saratoga funds have been used, to track balances in enterprise funds and other funds, and to reconstruct expenditures in the Town of Saratoga for the past several years.”

Lakia ended his affidavit by writing “The hard drive from Suzie Cox’s computer is necessary to obtain documentation regarding the mismanagement of the Town of Saratoga’s finance and any discrepancies in the accounting of funds.”

“In the beginning of this summer, the sheriff’s office asked the (Wyoming) Division of Criminal Investigation (DCI) to step in and complete the investigation. The Division of Criminal Investigation, fairly regularly, does investigations of this nature into financial types of fraud,” Mayfield-Davis said. “They also have the ability to work with the department of audit pretty closely (and) have a good relationship with them.”

Mayfield-Davis further informed the governing body that the investigation had been undertaken by Special Agent Mike Carlson, who had worked with Justin Chavez of the Wyoming Department of Audit.

“One of the things that’s really important for the public to understand, and also (the) town council to understand, is this is a criminal investigation. It is not the job of DCI or the county attorney’s office to be involved in general financing issues. It is specifically to look for crime,” said Mayfield-Davis. “This is not a forensic audit that could be done by some accounting but it’s an investigation.”

According to the county attorney, a request had been made to the Department of Audit to assist in going through the Town of Saratoga’s finances. In response, the department stated they could not get involved as the Town of Saratoga had already engaged with an auditor and with third-party accountant James Childress.

Carlson, who was also in attendance at the meeting, spoke to the governing body following Mayfield-Davis and provided some detail of the investigation. According to Carlson, the Wyoming Department of Audit reviewed the Town of Saratoga’s Census reports from 2011 to 2019 to find that in all years except 2011 and 2013 the Town had run in a deficit.

“As far as the investigation itself, we do strict criminal investigations. I’m not an auditor. When we do these, we rely on the town personnel, the CPAs that have been hired by various entities and we’ll talk to them,” said Carlson. “One of the things that is unique to CPA firms is if, during the process of doing an audit, they discover what they believe is fraud, criminal activity or something along those lines they will cease. They will quit, they will not finish the audit and be parties to a completed report.”

Carlson added that he had reached out to Childress and the Town of Saratoga’s new auditing company; Carver, Florek and James. According to Carslon, “I did talk to those guys and none of them were able to see any fraud or discrepancies in anything that would be criminal.”

When both Carlson and Mayfield-Davis were done speaking to the governing body, Nelson asked if there was still a copy of the hard drive available. The council member quickly clarified that his intention in asking was to have balances in various funds managed by the Town of Saratoga prior to adjustments made by Childress in March of this year. Carlson informed Nelson and the rest of the council that Casell, the program used by the Town, was web-based and would have that information available.

“Everything that you do in Cassell has got an audit trail with it. Going in and manipulating and changing all of the data in the program is going to show an audit trail. Breaking into the actual program itself is, quite frankly, probably beyond anybody’s capability in this room if not the state,” Carlson said. “The securities that are in place are pretty impressive.”

The next meeting of the Saratoga Town Council will be at 7 p.m. on December 15 at Saratoga Town Hall.