James Finn
The Advocate, Baton Rouge, La.
(MCT)
Mar. 10—The Baker Fire Department’s chief was arrested Thursday, accused of pocketing more than $22,000 in taxpayer money for overtime he didn’t work.
Chief Christopher Hunt, 49, was booked on counts of public payroll fraud, felony theft over $5,000, computer fraud and malfeasance in office, Louisiana State Police spokesman Taylor Scrantz said in a press release Thursday morning.
Hunt tendered his resignation from the fire department Tuesday — two days before his arrest, Baker City Attorney Kenneth Fabre said.
An affidavit says LSP opened a probe into Hunt last October after getting a “complaint” asking for trends in his payroll activity be investigated. By comparing electronic payroll records to a physical logbook where a supervisor tracked overtime hours, the document says the investigator found the hours for which Hunt charged the city outpaced those he had, in fact, worked.
The chief booked a total of 372 made-up overtime hours, the affidavit says, using online payroll records and “FH software” — an acronym for so-called firehouse software, an online business-management system. At a rate of $59.94 per hour, the false payroll entries earned Hunt a total of $22,297.68.
While unusual, allegations of payroll fraud by local officials in Louisiana are not unheard of.
Subjects of those allegations include five current or former New Orleans police officers who recently got FBI target letters saying they are each under investigation for timesheet irregularities, as well as former Jeanerette Mayor Aprill Foulcard, who on Tuesday pleaded to guilty to charges of malfeasance, bank fraud and theft. Employees in Foulcard’s administration logged nearly 800 hours they didn’t work, auditors say.
And an audit last fall dinged a BREC golf course manager in Baton Rouge for falsely entering more than 80 work hours, though the employee resigned, and BREC recovered the money he was paid from his final paycheck.
The Baker Fire Department on Thursday referred a request for comment on Hunt’s arrest to the mayor’s office, which in turn referred the request to Fabre, the city attorney.
Fabre said that city officials were “shocked and disappointed” by the allegations against Hunt, but stressed that the chief is innocent until proven guilty.
“当然,我们不会定罪an until he’s convicted,” Fabre said. “But if money is taken from the city, my chief responsibility as well as the mayor is to make sure that money is recovered.”
The city has learned few details about Hunt’s arrest beyond what State Police has released, Fabre said. He said said city officials found the chief to be a “good, hard-working man” in his leadership role.
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