{"id":65615,"date":"2019-07-29T02:04:08","date_gmt":"2019-07-29T02:04:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/city-of-cortez-probes-possible-embezzlement\/"},"modified":"2026-03-31T16:15:47","modified_gmt":"2026-03-31T16:15:47","slug":"city-of-cortez-probes-possible-embezzlement","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/city-of-cortez-probes-possible-embezzlement\/","title":{"rendered":"City of Cortez probes possible embezzlement"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

\"Cortez
Cortez City Manager John Dougherty announced Friday that a former city employee might have embezzled from the city.<\/span>Journal file<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

Cortez City Manager John Dougherty announced Friday that a former city employee might have stolen money from the city.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt has come to my attention this morning that a former employee has allegedly been embezzling from the City,\u201d Dougherty wrote in an email.<\/p>\n

An investigation is ongoing, and many details are still unknown at this point, Dougherty said. However, he said that the city is looking to keep the public apprised of what\u2019s happening and to be transparent.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis was one bad apple, it is not reflective of any of the employees I have been associated with here,\u201d Dougherty told The Journal<\/em> in an email. \u201cOverall, it is a hardworking group who genuinely care about their community.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Cortez Police Department declined to comment and added that the police force had been instructed to refer all questions to the city manager.<\/p>\n

The investigation is in the process of determining exactly how much money was allegedly embezzled. City officials were given a range that wasn\u2019t extensive in the \u201cgrand scheme of our budget,\u201d Dougherty said, and will not affect city services. The city plans to seek restitution.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt doesn\u2019t matter whether it was an ink pen or a billion dollars, the public trust has been violated,\u201d Dougherty said.<\/p>\n

He added that it was unknown whether the alleged embezzlement was connected to the delayed financial audits<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The city is waiting for results of the investigation, and City Council plans to discuss it in the coming weeks. The former employee has hired a defense attorney and \u201callegedly they are looking to cooperate,\u201d Dougherty said.<\/p>\n

\u201cOur No. 1 objective will be to recover the money and find out how it happened so we can put controls in place so it doesn\u2019t happen again,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

ealvero@the-journal.com<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Investigation includes former employee; details not disclosed<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":65616,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5738,5867,5737,5736,5735,5741],"tags":[21,318,28,29],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-65615","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-cortez","category-cortez-municipal-government","category-headlines","category-local-news","category-news","category-newsletter","tag-cortez","tag-cortez-municipal-government","tag-headlines","tag-newsletter"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65615","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=65615"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65615\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":92751,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65615\/revisions\/92751"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/65616"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=65615"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=65615"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=65615"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=65615"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}