The new Shelby County Criminal Clerk is finding countless uncashed checks all over her office – in folders, bookshelves, and in-between drawers in desks, according to LocalMemphis.com
No one bothered to deposit the checks either, according to the website.
These are checks made out to the clerk’s office. The clerk’s office is taxpayer-funded.
County Clerk Heidi Kuhn, on the job for 90 days, wants an audit of her department, the station reported.
That department oversees 10 criminal court judges and collects fines and fees from the public, LocalMemphis.com said.
The checks were filed during the tenure of former clerk Richard De Seussure, according to the station.
“We didn’t know who they went to, or what they were for,” the station reported Kuhn as saying.
This reportedly happened because of problems with the county’s computer system, known as Odyssey, which Memphis officials started using in November 2016.
“Kuhn says she has heard that the computer troubles were the reasons why the checks weren’t filed or cashed,” LocalMemphis.com reported.
“And she says former clerk De Saussure said his office had finally caught up with the computer problems.”
The station reported many previous problems with Odyssey.
“Judges were sent to wrong courtrooms, inmates were kept longer because of no paperwork,” the website reported.
“It is why she (Kuhn) says it is time for an audit, an outside audit of the entire department.”
Kuhn, meanwhile, told Memphis NBC affiliate WMC Action News that “several agencies, like the Shelby County Sheriff’s Office, have not received money collected from fees and fines of court cases in two years.”
WMC reported that Kuhn has hired two temporary workers “to solely focus on hiring two temporary workers to solely focus on going through old Excel spreadsheets.”
“The audit from there may take a month to two months which is a little concerning because we have to submit a budget to commission and we won’t really know everything that’s happened or gone wrong or that we need to see in order to present a concrete and complete budget,” Kuhn told the NBC affiliate.
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Chris Butler is an investigative journalist at The Tennessee Star. Follow Chris on Facebook. Email tips to [email protected].
Photo “Heidi Stegman” by Heidi Kuhn.
Background Photo “Shelby County Courthouse” by Thomas Machnitzki. CC BY-SA 3.0.
