Principal Uncertainty said:

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LOYAL AG said:

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Mas89 said:

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Driving thru on the highway, Elgin has Huge new developments of small starter homes. Like 1,500 ft small so it's probably the cheapest area within driving distance of Austin. Traffic during commute times and Sunday afternoon sucks. In cities, the city manager and finance director can Fleece the taxpayer, just like a Superintendent can a school district IF nobody is watching.
They find ways thru contracts with friends/ relatives they can trust. Hvac companies, pest control, maintenance, unneeded employees, missing or undelivered supplies, fuel, etc. They can literally spend the day thinking up ways to defraud the entity they work for. And many things and services are pretty untraceable unless someone tells.

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Ok but everything you described is traceable. I can tie the disbursements back to purchase orders or other supporting documents. Missing suggests there's no support for what was spent.

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Example: the purchase order you have says all the grass in public areas was cut on December 12th, 2024 by company XYZ who received the funds for that work. Now, trace that it was or was not done.

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How did they determine that $10M was the amount that was stolen?

Waiting on a Natty said:

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You are probably right about the scheme. Easy to set up and can work for a long period of time until it doesn't. Usually comes tumbling down when thief begins spending too much $$$ and buying stuff.

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Over time, I'd suspect someone got "less careful" as well and they would expose the scheme, at least a little. It can also come tumbling down when one of the players gets divorced. I know of two instances when that has happened.

A divorce can certainly do it.
"Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned."

lol! Mayor Fatty Beetus McBingoWings has been given some such fake honor by a fake organization.

Glad to see my little town is growing up. Grew up in Elgin and the big stories of my day were the city construction crews paving their own driveways or TABC busting up pasture parties.

Operation Varsity Blues

Then she should be interested in shining the light of truth on the incompetence/malfeasance. That she isn't is damning of her character.

"Can't we all just get along?!" while $10MM is gone is no way to run a government. That's not her money to shrug her shoulders at.

Hopefully for those taxpayers, Paxton isn't too busy campaigning to take care of this.

I'd be surprised if we don't hear from his office ASAP.

One Louder said:

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Elgin is effectively a suburb of Austin at this point. This comes as absolutely no surprise based on other things that have been happening there over the past several years.

I love how she says "move on and let's not make the same mistake again" without finding out what the initial "mistake" was.

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The mistake was electing this "super mayor" 2.0

Jack Squat 83 said:

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Hopefully for those taxpayers, Paxton isn't too busy campaigning to take care of this.

I'd be surprised if we don't hear from his office ASAP.

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The Texas AG's office has ABSOLUTELY NO JURISDICTION in a case like this.

Principal Uncertainty said:

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LOYAL AG said:

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Mas89 said:

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Driving thru on the highway, Elgin has Huge new developments of small starter homes. Like 1,500 ft small so it's probably the cheapest area within driving distance of Austin. Traffic during commute times and Sunday afternoon sucks. In cities, the city manager and finance director can Fleece the taxpayer, just like a Superintendent can a school district IF nobody is watching.
They find ways thru contracts with friends/ relatives they can trust. Hvac companies, pest control, maintenance, unneeded employees, missing or undelivered supplies, fuel, etc. They can literally spend the day thinking up ways to defraud the entity they work for. And many things and services are pretty untraceable unless someone tells.

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Ok but everything you described is traceable. I can tie the disbursements back to purchase orders or other supporting documents. Missing suggests there's no support for what was spent.

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Example: the purchase order you have says all the grass in public areas was cut on December 12th, 2024 by company XYZ who received the funds for that work. Now, trace that it was or was not done.

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His point is that your example here is not of money that is missing. Even if the grass wasn't cut, the records of payments SHOULD exist. The example would have to expand to include situations where both the work wasn't done (if it wasn't) AND the payment wasn't made, yet the funds for whatever project aren't there.

Accounting for non-profits/government is a little different than for business. I think most of us who took accounting or are familiar with the basic accounting statements of a business may not realize that.

Waiting on a Natty said:

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Jack Squat 83 said:

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Hopefully for those taxpayers, Paxton isn't too busy campaigning to take care of this.

I'd be surprised if we don't hear from his office ASAP.

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The Texas AG's office has ABSOLUTELY NO JURISDICTION in a case like this.

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For the embezzlement itself? Agree, that's a DA issue.

Public corruption is another subject, in my view. No?

Waiting on a Natty said:

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Jack Squat 83 said:

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Hopefully for those taxpayers, Paxton isn't too busy campaigning to take care of this.

I'd be surprised if we don't hear from his office ASAP.

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The Texas AG's office has ABSOLUTELY NO JURISDICTION in a case like this.

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From a pure common sense viewpoint, if the local citizens are getting hosed by their local leaders, would the jurisdiction not be elevated one step? Would this not be similar to an ISD being taken over by the state, if it is failing the local taxpayers?

Yesterday said:

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Glad to see my little town is growing up. Grew up in Elgin and the big stories of my day were the city construction crews paving their own driveways or TABC busting up pasture parties.

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Growing up into a corrupt ****hole it sounds like. As soon as you get a black Democrat in office, you can guarantee illegal shenanigans are on tap and that your community's trajectory is unrecoverable.

AG's office has no jurisdiction over public corruption either. ABSOLUTELY NONE.

AG's office has criminal jurisdiction over insurance fraud. That is their only criminal jurisdiction. It does have a prosecutor assistance division that, at the local DAs request, can come in and assist OR completely take over a criminal prosecution. But again, that is at the local DA's discretion.

AG's office had a kick azz prosecutor assttance division that would scare me as a defendant or defense attorney. Most of them, and all the really great prosecutors, quit because KP was requiring them do things that were unethical. Two of these really good ones may be familiar to Aggies. One is Bill Turner who was the Brazos County DA for around 32 years. The other was Lisa Tanner, who is an Aggie. Between the 2 they have probably tried north of 50 capital murder cases.

There may be some other little used criminal cases the AG has original jurisdiction over, but nothing of great importance.

One very easy prediction. If an investigation is started, the race card will be trotted out right away

I felt like that joke was obvious.

Waiting on a Natty said:

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AG's office has no jurisdiction over public corruption either. ABSOLUTELY NONE.

AG's office has criminal jurisdiction over insurance fraud. That is their only criminal jurisdiction. It does have a prosecutor assistance division that, at the local DAs request, can come in and assist OR completely take over a criminal prosecution. But again, that is at the local DA's discretion.

AG's office had a kick azz prosecutor assttance division that would scare me as a defendant or defense attorney. Most of them, and all the really great prosecutors, quit because KP was requiring them do things that were unethical. Two of these really good ones may be familiar to Aggies. One is Bill Turner who was the Brazos County DA for around 32 years. The other was Lisa Tanner, who is an Aggie. Between the 2 they have probably tried north of 50 capital murder cases.

There may be some other little used criminal cases the AG has original jurisdiction over, but nothing of great importance.

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Okay, you win. I had forgotten about the SNAFU when Perry was Governor that resulted in the Travis County DA's office being removed from exclusive jurisdiction over public corruption cases and it was moved to the Texas Rangers public integrity unit.

Ronnie Earle and Rosemary Lehmberg were a blight while in that role in Travis County. They were the most corruption for years.

That's OK. You are right much more often than not.

Just think if the AG Office had original jurisdiction over public corruption. That would put the most corrupt state official since LBJ overseeing the prosecution of public corruption.

Waiting on a Natty said:

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That's OK. You are right much more often than not.

Just think if the AG Office had original jurisdiction over public corruption. That would put the most corrupt state official since LBJ overseeing the prosecution of public corruption.

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I never meant to imply it would be exclusive jurisdiction. But that the AG's office could aid in the investigation from a public corruption standpoint. But you were correct. They have no role here based on what we know.

I also have a vague recollection of being involved (peripherally) when the AG's office was doing some sort of investigation but can't remember exactly what was about. Had a meeting, nothing happened and that was that. Of course that would have been back in the 90s. And I was more politically connected on the conservative side, or my clients were, to be precise. Never really liked the politics of Travis County as I also represented developers during the Save Our Springs impervious cover battles back then. SOS was a major PITA.

SOS?

Waiting on a Natty said:

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SOS?

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Save Our Springs. Edwards Aquifer, Barton Springs was the mascot for that environmental group. Their leader was a lawyer named Bill Bunch and SOS was his only client. He was beloved by the rich hippie environmental class in Austin. (Voters who could vote a judge out if they displeased them.)

I was not representing a client in that particular lawsuit but I had reason to be in the gallery one day when Bunch was trying to get yet another of his endless injunctions against a developer.

But instead of a locally elected judge, the judge that day was a visiting judge from Seguin, if memory serves. Bunch was pissed that his political leverage over the locally elected judges (which he threatened and often) he had no leverage over this judge. He actually said that in open court to the judge. Judge was none too pleased with that and denied the injunction. LOL.

Waiting on a Natty said:

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Jack Squat 83 said:

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Hopefully for those taxpayers, Paxton isn't too busy campaigning to take care of this.

I'd be surprised if we don't hear from his office ASAP.

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The Texas AG's office has ABSOLUTELY NO JURISDICTION in a case like this.

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That's never stopped Paxton from filing a dumb lawsuit.

The only reason for the mayor to say let's move on nothing to do anything about is they are on the take as well. Or the prior thieves are family.

FTAG 2000 said:

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The only reason for the mayor to say let's move on nothing to do anything about is they are on the take as well. Or the prior thieves are family.

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Clearly. As Mayor, she has an obligation to figure this out even if it's just from a moral and do the right thing perspective. But I would wager she has a job duty obligation to try and figure this out.

doubledog said:

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Highway6 said:

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Theft is a crime. Open an investigation, arrest the thieves, and send them to jail

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Quote:

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City Council members have unanimously voted to release Tom Mattis as the city manager in response to an undisclosed internal matter, city officials said

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December 2024.

In this case the "Mayor" and the investigators do not need to look to far from their former senior staff.


https://www.elgincourier.com/article/3253,mattis-removed-search-for-new-city-manager-begins

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First choice for a replacement got cold feet after receiving an offer. Must have taken a long, hard look at what he was in for.

https://www.elgincourier.com/article/4049,city-manager-pick-rejects-elgin-offer

Quote:

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City officials announced last week that Wayne Reed has declined an offer to become Elgin's next city manager.

Reed, current Cibolo city manager, was one of four finalists named last month in the city's search for a new top administrator. He reportedly told Elgin leaders the move was not the right fit for him and his family.

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I don't have an answer to your question. But off the top of my head I cannot remember a municipality ever being taken over by the state.

And what agency would take it over. That mechanism with schools exists because schools receive state funds from the Tx Department of Education.

LOYAL AG said:

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Two thoughts.

1. Isn't this what they make forensic audits for? I doubt the money was sitting in the corner in stacks of unmarked $20 bills and got carried out in copy paper boxes. There's a paper trail somewhere. I guess he figured since we've moved on from some of the amazing **** DOGE discovered that Elgin citizens will just move on from this.

2. I didn't think Elgin was big enough to elect Democrats yet.

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. The mayor does not appear to have the word investigation in her vocabulary

I dont see how the grandma cabbage fart defense is going to stand here. You can't just tell the public the past doesn't matter lets just move on.

DCAggie13y said:

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Principal Uncertainty said:

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LOYAL AG said:

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Mas89 said:

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Driving thru on the highway, Elgin has Huge new developments of small starter homes. Like 1,500 ft small so it's probably the cheapest area within driving distance of Austin. Traffic during commute times and Sunday afternoon sucks. In cities, the city manager and finance director can Fleece the taxpayer, just like a Superintendent can a school district IF nobody is watching.
They find ways thru contracts with friends/ relatives they can trust. Hvac companies, pest control, maintenance, unneeded employees, missing or undelivered supplies, fuel, etc. They can literally spend the day thinking up ways to defraud the entity they work for. And many things and services are pretty untraceable unless someone tells.

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Ok but everything you described is traceable. I can tie the disbursements back to purchase orders or other supporting documents. Missing suggests there's no support for what was spent.

---

Example: the purchase order you have says all the grass in public areas was cut on December 12th, 2024 by company XYZ who received the funds for that work. Now, trace that it was or was not done.

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How did they determine that $10M was the amount that was stolen?

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That is still being kept secret.

What I hope happened, as soon as the DA heard of this, immediately send 3 of his investigators to Elgin city hall with a Grand Jury subpoena Instanter for ALL the financial records for the last 7 years. That covers the time that is within the statute of limitations plus 2 years.
Then get a forensic auditor OR an FBI agent who works primarily white collar cases and began the task of uncovering the malfeasance.

Quote:

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That is still being kept secret.

What I hope happened, as soon as the DA heard of this, immediately send 3 of his investigators to Elgin city hall with a Grand Jury subpoena Instanter for ALL the financial records for the last 7 years. That covers the time that is within the statute of limitations plus 2 years.
Then get a forensic auditor OR an FBI agent who works primarily white collar cases and began the task of uncovering the malfeasance.

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Which means it was 10 million they have identified thus far. Took me about three full reviews of 7 years of financial data to get to the final number. And I am not a trained accountant. These things tend to happen in tranches over distinct and separate time periods. Like they'll feel guilty or get scared and stop for a awhile and then resume when they don't get caught.

So identifying that precipitating event and focus on the time period around that, you can pick up on even more.

So true. And that's why I would get financials that are outside the statute of limitations. Allege a "continuing course of conduct" and the prosecution can go back to the very beginning of the criminal conduct. May be 10 years and $13M.

Waiting on a Natty said:

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So true. And that's why I would get financials that are outside the statute of limitations. Allege a "continuing course of conduct" and the prosecution can go back to the very beginning of the criminal conduct. May be 10 years and $13M.

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Yeah. More than one way to skin a cat. Usually start small and then get more emboldened as time goes by. Plus, they tend not to aggregate totals in their minds over a long course so they think it's just a small amount that won't raise red flags.

But the aggregate amount will raise them, when someone knows what they are looking for.

How Abagnale was caught. (Different method, I know.) Got greedy. Keep it low and slow. And constant. The starts and stops become signposts.