DA, former auditor answer questions in theft case
Van Zandt County District Attorney Chris Martin held a press conference Dec. 22 “to discuss some of the continuing questions regarding the Van Zandt County tax assessor-collector investigation prosecution” that resulted in J.J. Minyard pleading no contest to taking more than $178,000 from county coffers.
Martin told those gathered in the county court at law courtroom that “the investigation is over. There are no co-conspirators. She acted alone. The evidence points to that and J.J. Minyard told me that herself.”
After Minyard’s plea hearing, conviction and fingerprinting, Martin said she told him “if you will come see me, I will tell you about this case.” Martin said he arranged through Minyard’s attorney to visit her in the Henderson County Jail. (Female Van Zandt County inmates are housed in the Henderson County.)
“We sat down and she fully disclosed everything to me,” Martin said. “She told me the investigation was spot on, that the manipulation of the deposit slips is exactly how she did it.”
According to Martin, Minyard told him she “waited for all her employees to get her stuff together and she took a blank deposit slip and on the way to the bank, she manipulated it. Christy Whitaker had nothing to do with this crime. Phyllis Humphries, Darlene Davis, no one else in that office had anything to do with this crime, according to J.J. Minyard,” Martin said, “And that’s reported by all the evidence. J.J. Minyard said ‘Chris, you had to know it was me. It had my handwriting all over it. No one else did anything with those deposits except me.’ ”
In response to a question from Pct. 1 Constable Mickey Henson, Martin said the chance of Van Zandt County getting any significant restitution is “slim to nil.”
“… In any criminal case the restitution is ordered as a part of the judgment and that order follows them to TDC where they are serving time, like Mrs. Minyard will be,” Martin said.
If Minyard has money in her TDC account, the county could recoup some of that, he said, and “whenever she serves her time and she gets out on parole, then she will be held responsible by the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles supervision officer, that will be a term of her release and she will be ordered to pay that ... But, and in all likelihood, we’re are not likely to see that.”
Although Minyard was bonded, the limit was $20,000, Martin said in response to a question by Ronny Jones.
“And I believe that Judge Don Kirkpatrick was to be resolving that issue with our retaining counsel Robert Davis of Tyler,” Martin said. “I’ve asked that question several times, I have never gotten a response from Judge Kirkpatrick or from Robert Davis of Tyler … We had a meeting prior to the kick-off of this investigation, and that was one of the questions that I raised as to a way to try to get restitution back – even a small amount like $20,000, because every dime helps.”
When Mike Human asked where the money went, Martin said Minyard spent it.
“One of the first things when I did my investigation, I rounded up J.J. Minyard’s financial accounts … I pulled her campaign account, I overturned every rock that I could to find out if there was a stash of money somewhere we could bring back,” Martin said. “None of that money was ever deposited into the bank. In talking to J.J. she kept it cash, and she spent it liquid as fast as she got it. She has no money. She even cashed out her retirement to buy a house last year.”
Bob Reese asked Martin how long the county would try to collect on the restitution owed.
“If we turn the judgment over to collection, like we do with civil remedies, it’s gonna have to be reviewed 10 years so it doesn’t become dormant and I don’t know what the max is on that,” Martin said. “So if at the end of 10 years, she’s on parole, the likelihood of seeing her serve 100 percent of her sentence I think would be unreal, they’re letting dope dealers go with less time than that, so when she is on parole, when her parole expires, any unpaid remnant of that restitution, they are gonna have to go to civil collections. From that point, they will have to renew that and it will become a civil action and they will have to collect it. … We don’t have debtors prison anymore and I think that’s what people want is to put her in jail and give her the motivation to pay and when she pays everything then she gets out.”
Martin said based on Minyard’s credit reports, there is no evidence to suggest that she has any assets. “The house is foreclosed on and by her own admission, the only thing she owns is a bed and a dresser,” she said. “ … I think she had to request money from her family and things like that. I don’t know of any assets that would be worth perusing to try to recoup. That is certainly something that I looked at …”
Martin said Minyard received no preferential treatment during the court process and her charge didn’t appear on the docket because she had not been arrested or indicted by a grand jury and was appearing on her own. “There was nothing legally to hold her, nothing legally required to make her show up on that day,” Martin said. “… If you’re not in this business then you don’t understand that a lot of people will say they are going on a certain date and they don’t show up like they are supposed to.”
Martin said Minyard’s attorney, Mark Lavery, told him on Dec. 7 that Minyard would be in court Dec. 10. “Whenever we homed down the plea agreement on what we were willing to do, I anticipated it would be after Christmas we would have a resolution,” Martin said. “It wasn’t until Mark Lavery had indicated that Ms. Minyard wanted to take a plea and speed it up, so at that time I gave him about four or five days to which the 294th would be meeting and he should pick one of those. Two weeks go by and then he finally indicates that on Dec. 7 that he would like the Dec. 10. … So we issued the dates and I tell them these are the dates that you can come in and you can resolve this and he indicated to me that they wanted that date.
“I followed up on the 8th and asked him if we are doing this on the 10th or not … I got a response on the 9th, and he indicated yes … so at that time I started my process of drafting an information, 35-page information, outlining every date of the missing money. That’s my charging instrument. That’s what I have to file. ... I didn’t want to do that if she wasn’t going to show up because then my strategy was going to change. I was going to resummons the VZC grand jury and go in there and induce an indictment. So on the 9th, I started that paperwork.
“I built a 35-page information and by the time I finished it, the district clerk was closed so I had to file it the next day. I filed it the next morning after sitting in my office and reviewing it with my assistant DA for accuracy.
“The problem is those daily dockets are printed in advance. And so there was no way for her to end up on the docket unless the judge just stopped and printed a new one up for that afternoon.
“So did she get preferential treatment? Absolutely not. She was waiving her right to a grand jury therefore she was not under a notice of court from the 294th to show up on this day otherwise a warrant would be issued for your arrest. That didn’t pertain to her because she hadn’t been arrested. So it was on her willingness to show up and enter that plea without the jurisdiction of my office, or the court, or the sheriff or anybody to be able to pick her up and drag her into court.”
Although Martin’s wife worked in the county auditor’s office at the time of the theft and during the investigation, Martin assured those gathered that did not represent a conflict of interest in the investigation.
“ My wife was working in the auditor’s office before I became the criminal district attorney,” he said. “She’s been the first auditor down there, I believe in ‘07, and so I knew that my wife had nothing to do with auditing supervising or doing anything with the tax assessor-collectors office. I knew which employee within Mr. Shinn’s office was responsible for that and it was not my wife. And there was no conflict of interest. But never the less, I still went and did my legal duty to determine if I had a conflict. And I didn’t have the conflict because she wasn’t involved with overseeing that account, reconciling the bank statements, doing the spot audits or anything in the tax assessor’s office.”
Martin said his wife did assist in the investigation after former County Auditor John Shinn determined “that it was possible fraud.”
“He did recruit her and ask her to help compile information in and help try to tone down on where the missing funds could have been,” Martin said.
Martin said he “could have easily stepped back and turned it over to someone else. But I felt like I would have shirked my duties because I was elected by the citizens of Van Zandt County, just like Don Kirkpatrick and Shirley Chisham, to do a job. I didn’t have a conflict of interest.”
If special investigators were used, they would have billed the county, Martin said, and they would have had special auditors, who would have billed the county.
“What I did is that I met with the Van Zandt County commissioners and we went over our strategies on who do we go with,” Martin said. Do we do it locally? Do we go through the AGs (attorney general’s) office or do we do it with the feds? And so we went with AGs office and it didn’t cost us a single dime. All the trips, didn’t cost us one dime. There is no conflict of interest, I’m not going to shirk my duties, and I did a good job in not spending any additional money since we were out 180,000.”
In response to a question from Lou Ann Everett, Martin confirmed that Minyard could be eligible for parole review in 14 months and eight days. “That equates to actual time served plus good conduct time equals one quarter of her sentence,” he said. “ So that’s how the mathematical equation that they use comes out – 14 months, 8 days.
Bert Fite asked about the county’s checks and balance system.
“For deposit slips to slip through the cracks and stuff like that, it shows there was a lack in the checks and balances,” he said. “Is there something that has changed since all this has come to light that will assure the taxpayers it won’t happen again in the future?”
Martin said he couldn’t answer why the checks and balances didn’t work in this case. “I’m not an auditor and I’m not an accountant, that’s not my role in the county … I figured out how. I didn’t figure out why.”
Conflict with publisher
Martin said he wasn’t more forthcoming with news interviews requested by Van Zandt newspapers because the newspaper was interested in “blatant sensationalism.”
“You’re interested in making money and headlines. That’s what newspapers do,” he said. “I hoped you had more journalist integrity than that, but you don’t.”
During the press conference, Martin had a heated exchange with Publisher Brad Blakemore concerning Blakemore’s opinion column regarding the Minyard case. In the column, Blakemore raised the conflict of interest question.
Martin said he felt his wife was maligned in the column. He also criticized the newspaper for a photo incorrectly identifying the county employees with Minyard after her sentencing.
John Shinn
In his portion of the press conference, former county auditor John Shinn said he did “regret this happening because this is my money and my family’s money too. I have been a county employee for 19 years before I retired.”
Shinn said his investigation “was to see if the money had been put in a wrong account.”
The tax office has several accounts and satellite offices and “there is a lot of reconciling to be done. It requires a lot of auditing and very detailed amounts to come up with what we came up with,” he said.
He said when his officer noticed things weren’t adding up, he visited Hopkins County to look at their auditing process.
Shirley Chisham recognized the problem when she was elected, Shinn said. He confirmed that Chisham met with him and then-county judge Rhita Koches “and requested an outside audit because she said she still didn’t have the $109,000. She was right, and it was very obvious that it wasn’t in there. We didn’t know why at that time. After Mrs. Chisham left, I asked Judge Koches if I could try to find it before going out and spending money on an outside audit. I continued to do some work on it while also going through the budget process.”
Shinn said in January 2014, the outside auditor came back ready to close the books … “and they had some questions about the tax office. Then I asked Judge Koches if I could hire the firm to go back and check my numbers to agree that there was a problem to make sure I didn’t miss anything. During that time, we changed bank accounts also. That complicated everything. We just didn’t have the staff to do that work on a day-to-day basis.”
Shinn said the county auditor is appointed by the district judge and must “send a report to the commissioners and (is) supposed to send a copy of the report to the district judge also.”
Constable Mickey Henson asked if the fiscal year ends Sept. 30 and the books have to be closed, why that wasn’t done in 2011 “because the money should have showed up right then.”
“We did not close the account,” Shinn said. “It was just a choice we made. As far as the tax office, we really don’t close the books. The county wasn’t missing money. The tax office was missing money. She had a separate account. The county picked up the revenue. She doesn’t collect revenue. The TAC checks she writes for the county comes to the county treasurer.”
Closing
Toward the end of the press conference, Commissioner Virgil Melton Jr., a former Dallas County district attorney investigator, said most people don’t understand the complexity of investigating this type of crime.
“I don’t think that many people here can grasp what it takes to work a white collar crime,” he said. “The many subpoenas that has to go out to various banks for bank records on all the employees involved or that could be involved. Then you have to wait until the bank gets the records ready. Then, you have to go back and meticulously go through every check on that. That is why it takes sometimes one or two years before you can attempt to get an indictment on someone or point someone out as a suspect.
“I just want to say that I appreciate the hard work that went into this investigation. I appreciate the hard work of the district and assistant district attorneys, state investigators, state auditors and Mr. Shinn.
Every time I went down there he had to stop what he was working on to help me with my problem. I am thoroughly pleased with your work and what you have done and how you represented the citizens of the county.
“It is a massive undertaking and I am convinced without a doubt that there is no conspiracy and that we have the right person and that is the end of it.
Martin agreed.
“White collar crime is a lengthy investigative process,” he said. “We are not like the newspaper; we can’t convict people in the paper ... We can’t go out and accuse someone. If you want to go out and accuse someone without proof, then you take them to trial and you lose, then they walk away. You definitely have to do your homework on these type of investigations.
“For a fraud that was perpetrated over a year, it made sense that it took the same amount of time to meticulously go in there and investigate line by line by line.”
The auditor and investigator from the attorney general’s office had other cases to work, Martin said. “And, I will reiterate, that was an outside agency and outside investigator. They had access to everything. And, if someone thinks that there is conspiracy afoot, this investigator and his superiors, and his auditors, they had everything that we had. And, the evidence came back and pointed to one individual and the investigation honed in on it and that person appeared in court here in Van Zandt County and pled guilty.
“In a post conviction interview, she assured me that not one other person did it. She didn’t trust them to confide in them or even trust her husband to confide in.”
When corrected by Judge Don Kirkpatrick that Minyard pled no contest, Martin said “it has the same legal effect.”
He said he reason Minyard pled no contest was so that in case of a civil lawsuit, none of her omissions in court would be able to be held against her.
“She didn’t contest any of the evidence,” Martin said. “So, no more questions about conspiracy, cronyism or whether I have a conflict or if my wife stole the money or any outlandish question like that? If any other question arises, feel free to email me or contact me.”
