Embezzlement investigation in solicitor’s office unresolved 3 years later

Three years after an employee of the 14th Circuit Solicitor’s Office was suspected of theft and fired for it, no charges have been filed and there has been no public accounting of the missing money.

After repeated inquiries by The Island Packet and The Beaufort Gazette, Solicitor Duffie Stone admitted Monday to being part of the reason for the delay.

At issue is Stone’s discovery in August 2013 of inconsistency in a worker’s bookkeeping. Stone said he fired the worker then immediately called the State Law Enforcement Division to investigate.

The employee worked in Stone’s worthless-check unit, which handles cases involving bounced checks. The unit collects money owed to victims and prosecutes writers of bad checks in court. Fees collected from the offenders pay for the unit’s work, according to the solicitor’s website.

While SLED completed its investigative report and turned it over to the solicitor’s office some time after Aug. 5, 2015, Stone said he waited until last month — about 10 months after receiving the report — to forward it onto the state Attorney General’s Office to determine whether charges should be pressed against the employee.

“I should have taken it immediately and gotten it to the A.G. immediately. I should have done that and did not,” Stone said Monday.

Beaufort County Sheriff P.J. Tanner, whose wife, Angela McCall-Tanner, is running for solicitor in Tuesday’s Republican primary, is accusing Stone of sitting on the case in an effort to avoid negative news stories about his office.

“(Stone) doesn’t like and doesn’t want any bad press from anyone,” Tanner said. “And that’s what he did to protect his office.”

The first time the public was made aware of the alleged theft was at a May 2 debate between Stone and McCall-Tanner.

In response to a question from the audience about the possible theft in his office, Stone responded: “The SLED investigation is underway, and I told them to turn that over to the (state) Attorney General’s Office because the solicitor’s office was the victim in the case. It wouldn’t have been proper for the victim to be the one prosecuting the case. And when I conflict a case out, I don’t know anything about it after that. It’s improper for me to go back in and try to find anything out about it.”

Tanner said Stone lied to the audience.

“(Stone) said that the case was still under investigation and that he had turned it over to the attorney general,” Tanner said. “That is a lie as clear as you can put it. What he told those people is not the truth.”

Tanner said he personally checked on the case’s status on May 3, the day after the debate. He said Pete Logan, a SLED lieutenant, told him that the agency completed its investigation in 2014 and gave its investigative report to Stone’s office, and that the report had not been forwarded along to the attorney general’s office.

The 2014 date would seem to conflict with the date of the report, which Stone says is dated August 2015.

Stone said he did not lie and accused Tanner of election-year politics.

“The Beaufort County Sheriff’s Office is not involved in this matter, and it is unfortunate that the sheriff is using his office to attempt to help his wife’s political campaign,” Stone said. “Were I trying to hide something, I would not have called for a SLED investigation.”

A SLED representative would say only that the case is ongoing — a classification given to all cases until they are either dropped or resolved during prosecution.

Stone, however, has been difficult to peg down on the status of the investigation:

▪  When originally asked about the case’s status by the newspapers last week, Stone said he had not received an update from SLED about its investigation. In a subsequent interview, Stone said that he called the state Attorney General’s Office to check on the case’s status shortly after it was brought up at the debate. But Stone would not share with the newspapers what he had been told by the office.

▪  When questioned about it again on Monday, Stone said SLED sent him a copy of its report some time after Aug. 5, 2015. He referred to the report as a “victim’s report” — a term that representatives from SLED were not familiar with.

▪  On Wednesday, Stone said he had mistakenly believed that both his office and the state Attorney General’s Office had received a copy of the SLED report. Thus, he did not forward his copy along to the A.G. as is typically done. He said he ultimately forwarded it to the attorney general’s office when his post-debate call revealed that it did not have the report.

Stone said it was an honest mistake, made out of ignorance.

“This is the only time (my office has) ever been a victim,” Stone said, responding to a question as to why he did not realize that his copy of the report needed to be forwarded to the attorney general. “I can’t come up with a single time that we’ve ever been (a victim). ... I probably should not have referred to it as a victim’s report. There’s no stamp across it that says ‘victim’s report’ or anything like that. I probably misspoke when I said that.”

Stone added that he was very busy when the report landed on his desk, preparing for a pair of high-profile murder trials against defendants Aaron Young Sr. and Walter Glass.

“You could have put a bomb on my desk and I wouldn’t have known it,” he said.

But Stone defends his decision of not alerting the public in 2013 of the possible theft.

“It is not proper to discuss a case until either charges have been brought or the case is closed,” he said, adding that he’s followed the same procedure with previous cases. “The former employee is presumed innocent. ... Accordingly, I will not confirm the name of the employee or anything else about the matter.”

Additionally, Stone said he has not and will not read the SLED report because he is the victim and may have to testify if the attorney general’s office prosecutes the case. He gave assurances that there are no outstanding issues with his worthless-check unit but would not elaborate.

It’s unclear whether charges will be brought against the former employee or when a decision might be reached by the attorney general’s office. The office does not comment publicly on investigations.

This story was originally published June 10, 2016 at 6:00 AM with the headline "Embezzlement investigation in solicitor’s office unresolved 3 years later."