Full Extent Of City Scandal Exposed

For the past few nights - we've been telling you about the misappropriation of monies at city hall - allegedly under the hand of pay mistress Shirlene Sabal.

As we reported last night - the total is seventy thousand dollars - and today the mayor explained just how it was done - and showed us the eleven page audit detailing 258 fraudulent payroll entries:

Here's how he explained it:..

Mayor Darrell Bradley
"The extent to which there was a lost to the city council at this present moment it comes to $69,586.00 to be exact."

This audit report - complete don Friday - shows irregular overtime payment -made out by pay mistress Shirlene Sabal.

Mayor Darrell Bradley
"The pay mistress could have perpetrated this fraud on the public revenue because too many functions were concentrated in herself and what she would do is that she would simply in some cases forge some of the documentation for approvals for overtime and what she did is she targeted certain areas where we would routinely have overtime; works, sanitation - people would routinely be out on the weekends - out in the evenings and when you look at the report there would be very small amounts, $200 here, $150 there and so it was something which over a period a time could have come under the radar because of who she was in the city council; the function she was responsible for and then also the amounts that were involve and the areas that she targeted."

In most cases, the overtime payments were issued and collected, unbeknownst to the city council employees. She simply used their names to issue the checks - they never saw or benefitted from the receipts:

Mayor Darrell Bradley
"What would happen is that the individuals would receive their same cheques, so if I am a person who work at the city council and I make $250 every week, I receive a check in my name for $250 and what would happen is that there would be an additional amount that would be paid in my name for maybe a hundred dollars of overtime and it would show that she would prepare 2 separate cheques; one for $250 and one for the overtime amounts."

"What it would show is that I would not pick up the second cheque, she would actually go on the ledger and she would just write in the person's name. Actually one of our controls is a cheque ledger. She would just write in the persons' names and she would just take that additional cheque."

But that wasn't the extent of it; these overtime payments also went to pay loans made in these employee's names - again, loans they never knew they took out:

Jules Vasquez
"Now, there is also another element to it where as I understand it employees procured into making loans from these pawn shops type quick loan places and then she would give them a cut of the loan."

Mayor Darrell Bradley
"In terms of that she targeted employees who would not fully realize the scope of what she was doing and so what she would do is go to these employees; she would of course have the loan documents. We had questioned several of these employees; they had indicated that they didn't really know that it was a loan."

"All of that we are looking into, because this is something that in terms of putting in place the systemic changes would be ongoing for us. These individuals would sign these loan documents and she would procure the loan and she would go to the loan agencies. The monies would be paid over to her and then again she uses the overtime to repay these loans. The individuals would say that they sign some documents but they didn't really know what they were signing - it came from the pay mistress. Some of them indicated that they thought it was city council documents that they were signing."

This scam went on for at least a year and a half - bypassing multiple checks in the system - and no one noticed:

Jules Vasquez
"You all so have an internal auditor, you all did have a financial controller. Were these people a sleep at the wheel?"

Mayor Darrell Bradley
"The internal audit - because again I indicated that from last year persons from human resources recognize that there were some irregularities and they had requested an audit to be done of the payroll. The audit that was done last year in October missed this."

But now that it's been caught, identified and exposed, the council is determined to get its money back from Sabal:

Mayor Darrell Bradley
"We are dealing decisively with the recovery of these funds. I just had a meeting with Ms. Sabal just before you came in and we are taking possession of two vehicles and we are also taking possession of a piece of property that is owned by one of her relatives. We are doing an assessment on these items and we are going to credit these towards the $69,000 and then Ms. Sabal will be made to put forward a proposal as to how she intends to repay this amount because we are very serious in terms of ensuring that public funds are religiously guarded and we mean to collect back every single cent that is owed to the city council."

Jules Vasquez
"Are you leaving the option open that you may in lieu of suitable repayment agreement, you may pursue criminal charges?"

Mayor Darrell Bradley
"Definitely."

The council is presently interviewing for the post of chief auditor - who will be tasked to lead a full audit of the council's finances.

Channel 7