A special investigation by the State Auditor’s office has found around $35,000 in funds that were not properly handled by the former Cedar County Jail administrator in Tipton.
Auditor Mary Mosiman says questions were raised after jail administrator Daron Wilkinson left in December of 2015 and the interim administrator notice irregularities.
“She soon identified certain accounting irregularities regarding room and board feeds as well as commissary collections. She notice that certain collections recorded in the general ledger had not been deposited,” Mosiman says. She says her office dug deeper into the situation.
Mosiman says her office identified more than $26,000 of undeposited collections, as well as $7,380 of unbilled fees and a little over $915 of an excess vacation pay out, which she says is an improper disbursement. She says Wilkinson took steps to hid the missing cash.
“There says there was a cash transaction report which used notations such as ‘cash drawer short or cash drawer over’ to force the total to agree with the amount deposited,” according to Mosiman. She says they also found various rebate checks which were used to substitute for the undeposited collections. Mosiman says the cash transaction issues were on top of money that was never collected for services.
“Seven-thousand-380 dollars of either room and board or work release fees that should have been billed to the individuals and therefore deposited on behalf of the Sheriff’s Office that were not,” Mosiman says. The investigation covered June 1st, 2013 through December 31st, 2015. Copies of the report have been filed with the Cedar County Attorney’s Office, the Attorney General’s Office, and the Iowa Division of Criminal Investigation.