The forensic audit recently made public by the state auditor\u2019s office alleges that a former fiscal supervisor at the jail tapped into inmate trust accounts to issue fraudulent debit cards. The account is used for commissary and phone card transactions.<\/p>\n
State Auditor Brian Col\u00f3n said in a statement there was a breakdown of internal controls that resulted in possible embezzlement and fraud.<\/p>\n
\u201cIncarcerated individuals have families and friends who contribute to these funds. Theft is theft. This is not a victimless crime,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Officials at the Metropolitan Detention Center in Albuquerque said the money has been returned to inmates\u2019 accounts and that a criminal investigation by the Bernalillo County Sheriff\u2019s Office is ongoing.<\/p>\n
The audit says the former supervisor, who was not identified in the document, was put on administrative leave in February 2019 when the allegations first surfaced.<\/p>\n
When inmates are released, the remaining money in their account usually is loaded onto a debit card and given to them, the Albuquerque Journal<\/em> reported.<\/p>\n According to the audit, many of the fraudulent debit cards were issued over a year after an inmate\u2019s release, processed on the supervisor\u2019s computer under different employee logins and used at grocery stores and gas stations.<\/p>\n Jail officials were tipped off in 2019 when a former inmate called about money missing from the account. Officials found 64 fraudulent debit cards had been issued and spent since September 2018 for a total of $9,453, according to the audit. Investigators later identified an additional 36 fraudulent cards totaling $6,213.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" forensic audit recently made public by the state auditor\u2019s office alleges that a former fiscal supervisor at the jail tapped into inmate trust accounts to issue fraudulent debit cards. The account is used for commissary and phone card transactions. State Auditor Brian Col\u00f3n said in a statement there was a breakdown of internal controls […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[815],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-50185","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","tag-associated-press-new-mexico"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50185","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=50185"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50185\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=50185"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=50185"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=50185"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=50185"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}