Nearly a year after the Michigan State Police and State Treasury Department launched a probe into allegations of missing funds from the Augusta Township office near Ypsilanti, hundreds of thousands of taxpayer dollars are still unaccounted for, one official says.
Taryn Asher of Fox 2 reports that an email from a state investigator stated that the financial books are so messed up that investigators have only been able to pinpoint $80,000 in missing funds, and only $10,000 of that can be traced back to an official, former Deputy Treasurer Brendan Humenik. The email said the former deputy was expected to be charged, Fox 2 reports.
Still, Asher reports that it looks as if it's possible, that because of the poor financial records, one or more persons at town hall could get away with the theft of what one township official, Ira Todd, pegs at $800,000 in unaccounted government funds.
Todd, a township trustee, and a full-time Detroit Police homicide investigator, was elected in 2012. After taking office, he notified the state police about the missing funds.
"My job as trustee is not complete until we find the missing money and who is responsible," Todd told Deadline Detroit on Tuesday night.
He said the township had hired the accounting firm of Rehmann to straighten out the books. But in June, in an email to the township board, the firm wrote:
"The tangled and partial recordkeeping makes it impossible to properly match individual transactions between the cash ledger and the bank statements."
Todd said he's determined to find out what happened.
"I've personally turned over documents to the FBI for review," he said. -- Allan Lengel
