Indictment may be imminent in 2-year-old Albany Municipal Court embezzlement case

ALBANY — A 2019 theft case involving embezzlement of funds from the Albany Municipal Court office could have a major breakthrough, with a potential indictment coming as early as December.

“We are looking at bringing the case forward, perhaps within this session of the grand jury with everything that’s lined up,” Dougherty County District Attorney Greg Edwards said on Tuesday.

The currently empaneled grand jury will meet next on Dec. 15 and once more before the end of the year, and the case could be presented to it to consider indictments.

“If everything is completed as we anticipate in terms of the general investigation, we are looking at bringing it up to this grand jury,” Edwards said. “If we don’t get it done, certainly early next year.”

The district attorney’s office anticipates a single indictment that will charge four or five former Municipal Court employees.

After the embezzlement case came to light in the fall of 2019, Edwards requested the assistance of the Georgia Bureau of Investigation. Part of the agency’s work was conducting a forensic accounting audit, which can be a time-consuming process, to determine the amount of money stolen.

Because of the nature of the thefts, an exact accounting is not yet available. Tickets for which fines were paid may not have been recorded.

“One of the things that’s affecting a formal determination of money (is) there may be no formal records of money taken at all,” Edwards said.

“The money might have been taken in an instance, and the record never existed. That’s one of the difficulties of this particular investigation is making sure everything is rooted out.”

The GBI referred all inquiries in the case to Edwards’ office.

File Photo: Carlton Fletcher