We Can't And Shouldn't Blame Her
So as not to incriminate myself. I won 't say how, but I know this is not the whole story. Some of these elected jobs are so bogged down with politics it's impossible for our elected officials to do an effective job. Once in office the payback of favors begins. If you don't play ball with certain parties you won't get the job. Some of those employees indicted have probably been there as long or longer than Ms. Stamson herself. There are citizens who think Debbie Stamson should take responsibility for this latest scandal. Ms. Stamson worked for the clerks office some twenty plus years before she was elected as County Court Clerk. She would have to be naive or stupid not to be aware of some corruption at some level taking place. Having said that doesn't mean she was involved.I would bet the whistle blower is a disgruntled employee or someone who didn't get their expected cut of the money. We have discovered that these scams can be quite profitable. Not discounting the notion that someone could have done it just because they were honest. Whose to say Debbie Stamson didn't do it herself. She has already announced that she won't be seeking reelection. Just think about how the indictments have come down. Why did so many of them include City Councilwoman Barbara Swearengen-Holt? I think it was meant to show just how high this corruption goes. This office is responsible for over 650,000 license plates as well as disabled placards, business and marriage licenses. There is no way possible to be everywhere at once. If she's not alerted to a particular problem. It could easily go unnoticed. As long as we don't have evidence of her taking money herself. We can't and shouldn't blame her.
http://www.shelbycountytn.gov/FirstPortal/dotShowDoc/Government/ElectedOfficials/clerk_index.htm
posted by Common at
1:33 PM
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They are still makiing arrests. By the time they finish no one will be left.
This is how people purchase $300,000 homes making $30,000 a yr.
Fired clerk says she followed orders
'Take care of my friends,' worker alleges boss said of transactions with Councilwoman Ware
By Daniel Connolly (Contact), Memphis Commercial Appeal
Thursday, June 4, 2009
A clerk accused of accepting an unauthorized $5 payment from City Councilwoman Barbara Swearengen Ware said a supervisor, Charles Nichols, told workers to give Ware special treatment, according to records released Wednesday.
The clerk, Patricia Reid, was one of 10 workers who have been fired or have voluntarily left their jobs as the result of an internal investigation into bribery at the Shelby County Clerk's office, which handles vehicle registrations and other tasks.
Reid and seven other workers also face criminal charges.
Workers are accused of taking money and gifts from car dealerships and others in exchange for doing their jobs and, in some cases, for breaking rules.
Reid is one of at least three fired workers who said they were following guidance from Nichols, the former chief administrative officer of the clerk's office who retired in the course of the investigation amid accusations that he accepted a $250 gift card from a car dealer and $100 cash from another person. He has not been charged criminally.
Reid is accused of taking the $5 payment from Ware as well as several tips in the amount of $6 to $8 from a representative who was helping Hispanic immigrants do vehicle transactions.
Reid's personnel file, released Wednesday to The Commercial Appeal, contains a partial transcript from an interview with Dep. County Atty. Danny Presley, who is leading the internal investigation.
In the interview, Presley grilled Reid about a May 2007 incident in which Ware allegedly sought to renew a motor vehicle registration without the proof of inspection document that's required in the city of Memphis.
Reid says Nichols had urged her to treat Ware well.
"Well, in the office a couple of times (Ware) and her husband came in. Charlie -- Mr. Nichols saw them and he would say, 'You all take care of my friends,'" the transcript reads in part.
Reid went on to say that she should have been more careful when handling the transaction for Ware.
"I should have looked closer. But because of who she was, I didn't think about asking her," she said.
Efforts to reach Reid were unsuccessful Wednesday and Ware declined to comment about the investigation.
Ware has previously denied wrongdoing, saying, "I want to emphatically and unambiguously state that I have never bribed anyone or knowingly participated in any conduct that violated the laws of this state or this great nation."
Another fired worker who faces criminal charges, Millicent Rogers, has said Nichols told her not to question transactions made by Ware or other elected officials, according to a report by Presley.
And another fired worker, Paula Hanson, former supervisor of the Millington branch of the clerk's office, has also said she was following policies laid out by Nichols when she completed a vehicle transaction without proper documentation, according to records in her personnel file.
Efforts to reach Nichols were unsuccessful Wednesday.
The amounts that Reid is accused of taking are small, but Tennessee law doesn't set a minimum amount for payments to count as bribery, said Bill Bright, chief prosecutor for the county's white-collar crime unit. But a person accused of bribery can claim under Tennessee law it was a "trivial benefit" that wouldn't affect judgment.
County clerk fires 3 more
Workers face criminal charges; hundreds apply for vacant jobs
By Daniel Connolly (Contact), Memphis Commercial Appeal
Friday, May 29, 2009
County Clerk Debbie Stamson says a bribery investigation led her to fire three more clerical workers Thursday, while hundreds of people are applying for a handful of openings in her office.
Fired were Darlene Diane McKee, Patricia Ann Reed and Millicent Rogers, all of whom also face criminal charges and were already on unpaid leave. They had faced administrative hearings Tuesday.
They're accused of taking small payments from customers while handling vehicle registrations and similar transactions. The highest single payment cited in an administrative report prepared against the three by Deputy County Atty. Danny Danny Presley was $40.
Reid is accused of taking a $5 payment from City Councilwoman Barbara Swearengen Ware to complete a motor vehicle registration for which Ware didn't have the required proof of inspection.
Rogers is accused of completing another transaction in which Ware lacked proper documents, but denied taking money in exchange, according to Presley's report.
Ware has also denied wrongdoing. Efforts to reach the fired clerks were unsuccessful late Thursday.
The amounts the three are accused of taking are small compared to those Presley cited in the case of Paula Hanson, the former supervisor in the Millington office, who is accused of taking about $1,500 from a broker representing Hispanic clients. Hanson has been fired and denies wrongdoing.
All told, 10 workers have been fired or left voluntarily in the course of the internal investigation and a criminal probe.
That, combined with a hiring freeze, has brought the number of staffers in the clerk's office down from 98 in January to 85 now, Stamson said.
"The customers have to wait longer," she said.
Stamson's office recently received special permission to fill three title clerk jobs and one clerk specialist job.
Stamson said she has been told that more than 700 people applied when the jobs were posted in the county courthouse and on the Internet earlier this month.
She attributed the interest to the high unemployment rate.
Human Resources administrator Mike Lewis said he didn't know exactly how many people had applied.
Stamson named in license tag scandal
By Marc Perrusquia (Contact), Memphis Commercial Appeal
Originally published 12:09 p.m., June 12, 2009
Updated 12:09 p.m., June 12, 2009
The motor vehicle registration scandal in the Shelby County Clerk’s Office has touched that agency’s elected executive, Debbie Stamson, who is named in a county attorney’s report released this morning regarding another evident abuse in the office.
According to the report, Stamson allowed a Memphis man to renew his auto registration in 2006 without completing the mandatory motor vehicle inspection.
The motorist, Kelly Gilmer, complained to Stamson that his tags expired after city vehicle inspectors failed him because of a cracked windshield. Stamson allowed Gilmer to renew his auto registration before Gilmer completed repairs, the report said.
“She told me that if I promised to get the window fixed, that I could come see her the next day and she would get me my tags so I would not have to worry about getting a ticket and costing me more money that I did not have,’’ Gilmer said in a May 6 letter to Deputy County Atty. Danny Presley.
Gilmer, who is currently a supervisor with the Shelby County Trustee’s Office, wasn’t a county employee at the time.
Presley’s report emphasized that unlike other incidents in the clerk’s office, there is no evidence Stamson requested or received any money.
Eight current and former auto title clerks working for Stamson were indicted by a state grand jury on bribery charges.
Presley’s report said Stamson granted a waiver to Gilmer based on customs and practices in the clerk’s office employed over the past 20-25 years. Those practices allowed waivers when motorists faced minor snags or faced extenuating circumstances, including having a car impounded or being stationed out of state in military service.
“In some instances, the (exemptions) have been reduced to writing although the legal authority in support thereof is dubious,’’ Presley’s report said.
Presley said the City Council has a proposed ordinance before it next week that would make legal many of the exemptions that had been practiced informally in the past.
Clerk’s office supervisor pleads guilty to fraud charges
By Lawrence Buser (Contact), Memphis Commercial Appeal
Tuesday, July 21, 2009
A former supervisor in the Shelby County Clerk’s Office admitted in federal court this morning to accepting “lunch money” payoffs in a conspiracy to help illegal aliens obtain vehicle registrations and license tags.
Paula Hanson pleaded guilty to a two-count criminal information charging her with mail fraud and with helping illegal aliens avoid detection. She will be sentenced later.
Hanson, 43, who worked in the clerk’s Millington office, is the first to plead guilty in a months-long scandal in the clerk’s office that has involved more than a dozen employees and at least eight state criminal charges of bribery.
Later in the day, Maureen Bowers, 35, a notary public, pleaded guilty to conspiracy to mail fraud and helping harbor illegal aliens. She will be sentenced Dec. 10.
Other office employees are expected to plead guilty this week.
Federal prosecutor John Fabian said Hanson accepted fraudulent paperwork from several notary publics and issued vehicle registrations, titles, car tags and validation stickers.
The false paperwork also listed bogus addresses and misrepresented the vehicle’s true sales price to help owners pay less sales tax.
In return for her help over the past three years, Hanson received cash payments of from $5 to $20 from the notaries or about $1,500 in all.
“It was lunch money,” Hanson told U.S. Dist. Court Judge Jon McCalla. “It was something I shouldn’t have done.”
Hanson faces up to 15 years in prison when she is sentenced on Dec. 9, though federal guidelines almost certainly will suggest something much lower and she likely will ask for probation.
“She’s fully cooperating with the government investigation of her case,” said her attorney, James Thomas.
In a letter to county investigators earlier this year, Hanson denied that she took bribes for processing unlawful paperwork.
Instead, she said, “cash and gifts, they were received strictly as gratuities, and were shared equally and openly among my fellow associates.”
She admitted processing improper paperwork in March for a man seeking a title and license plate for a car, but only because the man was belligerent and because she could not make him understand his papers were in error.
Hanson said in her letter that she put the names of County Clerk Debbie Stamson and manager Beverly Peete on the application, hoping the application would be flagged and rejected by Downtown employees.
Hanson later said that was a mistake and blamed it on personal and professional pressure she was under.
The letter was in her personnel file which was viewed in May by The Commercial Appeal two weeks after she was fired.
Three more indicted in bribery investigation at Shelby County Clerk’s Office
By Lawrence Buser
Three new indictments have been returned in an ongoing criminal investigation involving an alleged bribery scheme in the Shelby County Clerk's Office by customers seeking favorable service.
The indictments were returned this week against the owner and two employees of Fleet Equipment LLC and Fleet Leasing, which sell and lease heavy-duty trucks and trailers at 2505 Farris View Blvd.
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Taken into custody Thursday were owner W. Mark Welch and employee James L. Welch, while a third defendant was not yet in custody. Bond was set at $10,000 per person.
Both men are charged with one count of conspiracy to commit bribery of a public servant and five counts of bribery of a public servant.
The indictments say the incidents occurred between Dec. 27, 2005, and Aug. 29, 2008, when employees were directed to pay clerks to influence them to process titles and registrations faster and in greater number than normal.
The payments were made to clerk Lynn Marshall, who was indicted in April on bribery charges, according to the new indictments, which say she was paid on one occasion to process 150 titles.
"These are very serious charges," said Dist. Atty. Gen. Bill Gibbons. "It is our contention that the defendants received favorable treatment as a direct result of payments made. Such conduct cannot be tolerated."
In April, eight auto-title employees in the County Clerk's Office were indicted for allegedly accepting bribes, including three accused of accepting bribes from City Councilwoman Barbara Swearengen Ware.
Ware was not indicted, but Gibbons said at the time the investigation was continuing.
The cases against the clerks are pending.
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