After the Riverside Press-Enterprise article ran ("Audit: Schools Misued Millions" on June 23, 2005), it took the District Attorney Mike Ramos' office until September 4, 2007 to file an indictment vs Tadd Honeycutt (who allegedly charged improperly $295,565 against the school budget for things like Jet Skis, custom wheels for a vehicle,a fishing trip and a guitar store spree and $752,813 for his private businesses) and C. Steven Cox (who allegedly charged for federal income tax payments, Disney merchandise, a Disney resort health spa, TV shopping network purchases, rock concert tickets, employee award banquets to the tune of $707,000). Total damages--$23,000,000 per the initial report. Both cases do not have trial dates yet despite it being four years post indictment in September.
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Blogger Bob's comments:
(1) What makes this so incredible, is that the audit data was given to Ramos almost 6 years ago;
(2) Why weren't these folks prosecuted--well take a look at the players. Honeycutt & Cox were big contributors to Ramos and or his buds. Postmus & JoAnn Almond were on the Charter School Board or the administrative company that Cox set up and one of the biggest recipients of the Charter School's largess was Former Republican Assemblyman Keith Olberg to the tune of $375,000 which Olberg "did little work to justify" (so why wasn't he prosecuted like Rex Guttierrez who was in a do-little-type job also);
(3) In a 2007 audit report that concluded "it would be fair to say that some of us were startled by the degree of...misuse of public funds, and the lack of accountability and fiscal oversight"--obviously the DA's office was not as offended, has let the defendants out on their OR, the public does not even have a trial date nor any accounting of what has been recovered (or even any plea agreements)
(4) I guess kids & school districts being ripped off is no big priority for this DA
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