A report by State Auditor Mary Mosiman identifies several thousand dollars in funds that were improperly handled by former Powesheik County Sheriff Tom Sheets. Mosiman says the conducted the audit at the request of county officials and found the proper rates had not been charged by the jail administrator. “Which resulted in just over $290,000 of funds — that if the proper rates had been billed — that the county could have been collecting,” Mosiman says.
She says other fee money was missing. “We did have a small amount of room and board fees which were collected, but we weren’t able to locate in a deposit. That was just over $760,” Mosiman says. “And then we also had over $13,000 in fees that were collected by the former sheriff for teaching gun permit classes, and those were not deposited with the county.”
County officials also raised a concern about money spent on fuel by the former sheriff. “We did an analysis and it looked like there was over $6,000 of excess fuel that had been purchased. And then there were also a few improper credit card charges,” Mosiman explains.
The Auditor says the report contains several recommendations for improving the control of funds in the sheriff’s office. “While this itself was not considered a special investigation, we did go ahead and file a report with the county attorney and the attorney general’s office,” Mosiman says. The audit covered the period from January first of 2010 until March of 2013.