UPDATE: At 12:47 p.m. on May 31, this story was updated to include comments and information from the Public Service Authority board chairman, who had not responded to our questions until two days after the story posted.
After a yearlong review, the Georgia Attorney General’s office declined to prosecute the case of $3.2 million fraud from the Camden County parks and recreation authority, following the death of the former director and lead defendant.
The AG’s office closed its involvement in the case last month after Senior Assistant AG Blair McGowan decided there was not enough evidence to support conviction of the three alleged co-conspirators originally charged alongside former Public Service Authority Director William Brunson.
McGowan cited the lack of financial documentation in the case to prove that Brunson’s assistant director, Shawnta Jenkins, purposefully mispent or misappropriated taxpayer funds. She also wrote that there was little evidence showing that former Camden County Chief Financial Officer Michael Fender and his wife, Caroline, knew the funds they received from Brunson for their Christian private school were illegal.
“It is undisputed that William Brunson stole money from the PSA,” McGowan wrote. “However, there is insufficient evidence to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that Shawnta Jenkins, Caroline Fender, or Mike Fender committed any of the alleged offenses.”
The AG’s decision to close the case marks a significant defeat for the Camden County Sheriff’s Office and Board of Commissioners. The agencies successfully pushed state officials last year to take on the case before it languished beyond its statute of limitations. Prior to the AG’s involvement, the cases against Brunson, Jenkins and the Fenders were split up between prosecutors in other counties, who had little incentive to try the case of another community’s fraud.
The Sheriff’s Office kept pushing; they were hopeful that the aging case would finally see its day in court. Sheriff Jim Proctor says that hope has now been extinguished.
“I don’t think it lends itself to any credibility on behalf of the taxpayers as to how their money is being spent,” Proctor said. “I’m not confident in the way things are being done, and I happen to be one of those taxpayers.”
Defendant’s death imperils case
The biggest blow to the case was likely the death of its central figure three months after the AG’s office took the case.
Brunson died last July after long-standing health complications. The former director served nearly three years in federal prison for tax evasion and was sentenced to five years in state prison in 2022, though it’s not clear he ever served time for this conviction. (The Georgia Department of Corrections did not respond to The Current’s questions about this.) The 2022 plea was only related to approximately $38,000 Brunson wired to buy classic cars and did not include the other millions in taxpayer dollars he was accused of stealing.
In 2019 the Camden County Sheriff’s Office charged Brunson alongside Jenkins, Mike Fender and Caroline Fender for the PSA fraud. The PSA is a public corporation meant to maintain fields, parks, pools and other recreational services for the county. Its board is staffed by county leaders and city mayors.
The primary fraud occurred from Brunson writing checks to himself or to his second-in-command, Jenkins, and cashing them, according to the sheriff’s office investigator, Chief Deputy Chuck Byerly. There would be real work orders associated with the checks, but Brunson would write the checks for more money than was actually needed, cash them at a bank, pay the servicer in cash and pocket the rest, Byerly said.
Brunson used PSA credit cards on cars, genealogy websites, his electric bills and other personal matters, a forensic audit revealed. But most of those funds were converted into cash, and therefore, the Sheriff’s Office never learned what came of it.
“Neither the audit nor the Sheriff’s Office could compare these checks to actual expenses incurred, legitimate or otherwise, because little or no documentation or receipts exist for any PSA business,” McGowan wrote.
Because of this documentation issue, the AG’s office said it could not prove Jenkins “retained any or all of these funds, whether he provided any or all of these funds to Brunson, or whether he personally paid any of the PSA’s outstanding bills in cash.”
The Current spoke with Byerly after the AG’s decision. He said he’s not sure the AG did any follow-up investigation on the case and may have only found the evidence they had as insufficient.
Byerly said he told the AG’s office “If it’s flawed, if I’ve messed it up, let me know what I did and what I need to do to correct it.”
“I never got a response on that,” he said.
As to the Fenders, McGowan’s memo states that the existing evidence shows the Fenders were unaware that the “grant” they received from the PSA director was fraudulent.
Caroline Fender runs the non-profit school, the Advanced Learning Center, in Kingsland. Her husband used to be the county’s CFO and also serves as bookkeeper for the ALC. Despite Michael’s previous role as county CFO, he “had no insight or oversight into the PSA’s finances as the PSA ran its own bank accounts,” the AG’s office wrote.
Caroline Fender was originally approached by Brunson in 2007 for money for her school, the memo stated. Her school ended up receiving more than $400,000 in “grant” funding from the PSA, which she kept thorough records of, the AG’s office said. Michael Fender deposited the money into ALC’s accounts.
“All available evidence indicates that Brunson acted alone in diverting funds to ALC and there is insufficient evidence to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that the Fenders had knowledge that ALC was not actually receiving a grant,” McGowan said.
Taxpayer dollars
Echoes of the PSA fallout were on display in late March 2024, when the PSA board chairman disclosed in a meeting that 34 payroll and employer match contributions were not uploaded to the third-party retirement account vendor, according to meeting minutes.
This was over a two-year period and resulted in close to $44,000 that had to be made up out of the current budget to cover past fiscal years, according to Chairman Alex Blount.
“For some reason in prior year(s) the employee tasked with uploading the contributions didn’t always complete the task fully/accurately,” Blount told The Current in an email. The city of Kingsland advanced the PSA two months of funding to pay back the contributions all at once, he said.
The board and city of Kingsland recently approved an agreement for Kingsland to provide accounting for the PSA. Its responsibilities include audits, budget preparations, financial reporting for presentations, and grant administration, the agreement states. The PSA will pay Kingsland’s accounting manager a $21-per-hour rate for work they do on the PSA’s behalf. This is part of an effort to secure agreements with local governments “to help reduce cost and staffing at the PSA,” Blount said.
Earlier this month, the PSA board also voted to give up control of a stadium, baseball and softball fields to the county schools system. The agency was unable to financially keep up with maintenance and renovations.
Camden County, home to around 58,000 people, a Naval submarine base, a popular national park and the final coastal stop in Georgia before hitting Florida, has been beset by enormous taxpayer dollar losses in recent years. These stem from uncompleted projects, payouts for police misconduct and, now, unprosecuted fraud.
Legal representation, police misconduct and crashed deputy vehicles relating to the Camden County Sheriff’s Office have cost nearly $2 million in insurance payments and increased rates, according to insurance paperwork obtained by The Current. The failed launch of the Spaceport project and fighting voters who did not want the project cost the county at least around $12 million, The Current reported last year.
To Byerly, the PSA fraud and Spaceport are linked in his mind.
“Money taken, money wasted,” he said. “There’s no transparency there. It’s got to be if I ask where my tax dollars go, I believe I have the right to know.”
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