• Some questions still remain about missing funds.
Former Animal Control Supervisor Joey Prince pleaded no contest to embezzlement charges and received a prayer for judgement (PJC) in superior court today.
Prince was accused of transferring $1,599 raised through a GoFundMe account into his own PayPal account in 2017. In May 2018, Prince was arrested on two counts of obtaining property by false pretenses, and one of embezzlement by a government employee. The funds were being raised for veterinary care and supplies for dogs at the shelter. Prince said he had permission from then-County Manager Bill Clark and County Finance Director Bobbie Faircloth to set up the GoFundMe, which did not involve any county money. The county lost or destroyed emails from that time, despite a state law requiring retention of most emails sent by or to local government agencies.
Prince’s receipts showed he spent an additional $300 out of his own pocket to help the animals. After his resignation, Prince made multiple public offers to return the money to donors, or give the money to the Columbus Humane Society.
Assistant District Attorney Allie Smith told the court that Prince comingled his personal finances with the GoFundMe by attaching his personal PayPal account to the fundraiser.
The verdict Monday brought to a close one chapter of years of problems at the shelter that led to it being taken over by the sheriff’s office last year.
Prince was hired in 2015 to replace Rossie Hayes, who retired in part due to serious injuries he sustained in a dog attack. He said he hit roadblocks when he asked Clark and others to help bring the shelter and its bookkeeping up to standards. Prince resigned in 2017 after a former part-time employee accused him of improper behavior at the shelter. Elijah Kemp, the city animal control officer at the time, had been fired from the shelter. He said he was retreiving a capture pole at the shelter when he looked through a window and saw the alleged behavior. Kemp resigned from the city after allegedly entering Prince’s office when he was out of town.
Prince’s replacement, Loretta Shipman, resigned last February when county commissioners voted to put Animal Control under the sheriff’s office. A number of records were found to be destroyed or missing. Shipman worked for Hayes, then Prince, and was interim director before animal control was taken over by the sheriff’s office.
Shipman was an outspoken supporter of former County Manager Mike Stephens when he was the subject of a sexual harassment investigation. Shipman was not named in the complaint against Stephens. The complaint was investigated by an outside firm specializing in such cases. The firm found no basis for the claims.
A memo from the sheriff’s office to the district attorney indicates Stephens told the sheriff’s office to stop its continuing investigation of Animal Control after Prince’s arrest.
While he was still county attorney, Stephens asked the sheriff’s office to investigate the GoFundMe case in August 2017, according to the memo. Prince was on a family vacation in New York at the time. After meeting with Clark on his return, Prince resigned. A copy of Prince’s resignation appears to have the date altered.
Acting in his capacity as county attorney, Stephens contacted the sheriff’s office about a “possible misrepresentation of funds” by Prince at Animal Control. The report did not note how or when Stephens was informed of the alleged embezzlement. A laptop computer and receipt books were discovered missing well days after Prince had resigned. Investigators at the time had problems accessing complete financial records at the shelter. In one instance, a cup of coffee was spilled on a ledger and destroyed the records.
Financial records, cash and computers were reported stolen or missing from the shelter in 2014, 2016, and 2018, according to sheriff’s reports. Hayes requested an investigation at the shelter in 2015 after $65 was discovered missing and a receipt book was damaged. Pages in the receipt book “were now glued together,” according to the report. The district attorney’s office declined to prosecute the case, and it was dropped.
When newly-elected Sheriff Jody Greene began looking into questions about finances at the shelter, then-Capt. Jason Soles and Det. Paul Rockenbach of the sheriff’s office provided a statement that Stephens had interfered with any investigations into the shelter after Shipman was put in charge.
In a statement to investigators in 2019, the investigators said Stephens instructed Soles and Rockenbach to cease looking into financial issues at the shelter after Prince’s arrest. The investigators said in a statement that Prince told Rockenbach he suspected Shipman was embezzling funds. After Rockenbach reported the statement to then-Sheriff Lewis Hatcher, the two investigators said they were ordered to Stephen’s office.
Stephens told the investigators to cease any further inquiries into the Animal Shelter and Shipman, since he (Stephens) “did not believe Loretta was taking any money and we did not need to investigate her.”
Soles has since resigned from the sheriff’s office, and is running for the Democrat nomination for sheriff. He is expected to receive the nomination, which will put him up against Sheriff Jody Greene this fall. Rockenbach still works for the sheriff’s office as an investigator.
Prince said he is glad to have the case behind him. He said he hoped to have a jury trial, but is financially exhausted.
“This case has bankrupted me,” he said. “It was continued multiple times before COVID-19. I wanted my day in court before a jury, but I can’t afford to keep fighting.
“In this case, the punishment was in the process. I was denied a speedy trial, as all Americans are supposed to have. The district attorney’s office didn’t interview witnesses until last year, yet they claimed the case was delayed by the pandemic. I think the process was designed to bankrupt me into pleading guilty to a crime I didn’t commit.”
Prince said he has not had a full-time job since his arrest. He reluctantly accepted the final plea offer due to finances, he said.
At the same time, Prince said multiple questions remain unanswered.
“How can a government entity delete emails and defy a court order without some kind of punishment?” he said. “The emails would have exonerated me, but they disappeared. Eight years of emails deleted.”
Prince said he was “amazed” at the memo from Soles and Rockenbach.
“Since when can a county manager or attorney order an investigation to be stopped?” he said. “The money they accused me of stealing for my personal benefit has all been accounted for. I have the proof. But where are the thousands of dollars that appear to be missing over the course of several years, well before I went to work there? Don’t those funds matter?
“Something like $60,000 in adoption fees and donations are missing, records were destroyed, and no one seems worried about it.”
Public adoption numbers under Shipman were among the highest in the state, but a sampling of bank deposits by the shelter during that period showed significantly less money than should have been generated in adoption fees, even if animals were adopted at a reduced rate by rescue organizations.
Greene took over Animal Control last year, and instituted new protocols for the entire agency. Animal Protective Services is now part of the sheriff’s office, and new financial rules are strictly adhered to by personnel. Funds are documented electronically, rather than in a paper ledger.
Chief Deputy Aaron Herring of the Columbus County Sheriff’s Office said that officials are still going through what records they can locate regarding the tenures of Shipman and Prince. In 2019, Green and Herring sent the district attorney’s office a memo outlining questions about the investigations at the shelter.
“The discussion concerned me as to another employee that could have been involved in the same crimes whom is now the Director of the Animal Control,” Herring said in the memo to ADA Allan Adams. “The detectives involved in the case and conversation at that time has prepared statements of the events that took place as a record.
“I want to forward you those statements to review, as law enforcement we have a duty to investigate crime that we have knowledge of and I believe this could be an issue for you and maybe Jon (David, the elected District Attorney) or Chris (Gentry, assistant district attorney) to look into. I do not want anything to corrupt an ongoing case whether that case is closed or not and I do not want discovery of evidence in a case withheld from the District Attorney’s Office.”
“All cases are still open concerning the old animal shelter,” he said in an email. “However as we all know most of the records were destroyed or found nonexistent while managed by past directors. As we continuously improve operations under Sheriff Green’s leadership we may come across more details or evidence for review of possible criminal intent.
“If that does arise we will present the facts for prosecution.”
