Missing funds traced to former tax assessor

Previous official sentenced to 10 years for stealing $178K

Former Van Zandt County Tax Assessor-Collector J.J. Minyard appeared in court in Canton Dec. 10 and pled guilty to stealing $178,856.08 from taxpayers during her tenure as an elected official.

Minyard was the county’s tax assessor-collector from 2009 to 2012. She was sentenced to 10 years in prison and ordered to repay restitution.

Minyard’s arrest and conviction comes on the heels of a joint investigation by VZC Criminal District Attorney Chris Martin and Sgt. Johnny Hatcher, an investigator with the Criminal Investigations Division of the Texas Attorney General’s Office.

According to information from Martin’s office, a yearlong investigation revealed that Minyard had manipulated more than 120 deposit slips by overstating the amount of checks collected while understating the amount of cash collected.

Minyard pocketed the cash, Martin said.

“Additionally, there were 11 different dates wherein she failed to deposit the daily business into the county’s bank, leaving the money completely unaccounted for,” he said.

Discovery

If not for the perseverance of current Tax Assessor-Collector Shirley Chisham, the funds would most likely still be missing.

Problems for Minyard began when Chisham took office Jan. 1, 2013.

Chisham said in April 2013 she received a letter from the Texas Comptroller of Public Accounts stating the 2013 annual commission due to the county. Each year, VZC keeps a portion of collections taken in by the tax office. “I file our monthly report with the comptroller’s office,” Chisham said. “If we have enough we can keep it all in one month, if not we do it in the following month. Some counties are too small to do it all in one month.”

Also around that time, Chisham said she was contacted by the county’s outside auditors who said they would be conducting an outside audit. As part of the auditing process, Chisham would be interviewed about cash collection procedures and financial reporting processes used in the TAC office.

“During the interview with the outside auditors, I brought up the fact that I had a $109,131.77 check that was written on a closed account on May 23, 2012, which was not updated in the TAC QuickBooks records. I could find no proof that the check was ever received or cashed by the county,” said Chisham. “At that time, the auditor told me that their firm would find it during the external audit and it would throw up a red flag. But, to my knowledge, it was never identified as a red flag.”

In May 2013, Chisham said she began the process of reviewing prior Sales Tax Commission letters to try and figure out to where the funds should be distributed. During that time, she said she found the check stub in the amount of $109,131.77 dated May 23, 2012, made payable to the VZC treasurer.

“After reviewing the records, I realized that the check had not been updated into the records and had been written on a closed Prosperity Bank account, which was closed April 2012,” she said.

It appears as though Minyard attempted to close the Prosperity account as early as October 2011 but credit card transactions continued to flow through that account therefore causing the account to continue to accrue a balance, Chisham explained.

“After several checks were written to close the account, the account was finally closed in April 2012 with a check in the amount of $33,490.04 which cleared April 10, 2012, as a deposit in First National Bank of Canton,” Chisham said. 

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