Report: Lax oversight made DeKalb court vulnerable to scam

DeKalb Recorder’s Court, which handles traffic tickets and misdemeanor charges, was found in an unrelated review last year to have allowed millions of dollars in unpaid fines to slip through the county’s fingers. The court was then burned by a fraud ring. Three former employees and five others were indicted in connection with ticket-fixing. Two of the defendants pleaded guilty last week.

One was Charlene Johnson, a former tribunal technician. She pleaded guilty to two counts of violating the Georgia Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act and was sentenced to 12 months behind bars. She admitted charging a fee to dismiss tickets and was ordered to pay back $20,000.

The recently concluded grand jury, empaneled for July and August, said lax oversight made the court vulnerable.

“Clearly, no ‘check and balance’ system was in place at the time of the alleged criminal actions, and frankly, the Grand Jury finds it deleterious for the head of Recorder’s Court to fail to take any initiative, action, or corrective steps once her former employees were implicated,” the jurors wrote.

County CEO Burrell Ellis issued a statement that said the grand jury’s findings and recommendations “confirm earlier concerns raised about the Court’s operations and management” and also justify actions he’s undertaken to audit the court and go after uncollected revenue.

Walker said she acted swiftly when she learned how the criminal ring had diverted money. She said the scam worked like this: court workers lied to judges that the police officers who issued the tickets had authorized their downgrading from fines to warnings. Walker said her new policy requires officers to either show up in court or submit a request in writing to downgrade a ticket.

“I’m not sure why they chose not to accept that” explanation, Walker said of the grand jurors. “But they were told.”

County Commissioner Sharon Barnes Sutton, who heads the commission’s public safety committee, said the scam was at such a low-level that a top official such as Walker would have been hard-pressed to catch it.

“It was collusion,” she said. “They knew how to cover their tracks.”

Grand juries typically hear evidence and testimony in criminal cases presented by the state. But they can also review government operations and financial oversight. The grand jurors took sworn testimony from officials, including Walker, and also interviewed court experts and reviewed investigative files.

Problems at the court were already well-known. Last year, a consultant for the administration of former CEO Vernon Jones determined that the court was losing as much as $7 million a year in uncollected fines.

Jones’ successor, Ellis, recently hired that same firm, e2 Assure, to find people who have failed to appear in court and urge them to pay.

The jurors recommended more systemic fixes and Walker agreed with several of them. She said she has been asking for years to add sworn officers who can enforce warrants. Currently, there are about 85,000 outstanding warrants in DeKalb Recorder’s Court and only two officers assigned to enforce them.

Walker said another 10 officers would go a long way toward reducing the backlog. They would cost half a million dollars in the first year, she said, and would bring in around nine times that much money.

It’s unclear how much the other major recommendation — an improved computer system to track tickets and cases — would cost to implement.

Walker said she’s “not confident” she will get the money for the system this year, even though her court sent $21 million in collections to county coffers last year and got back only $4 million for its own operations.