Shelby County – Things are not adding up

Shelby Co. (ECWd) –

Shelby Co. State’s Attorney Nichole Kroncke sidestepped a board member’s actual question regarding questioning Keith Petard on the insurance matter costing the taxpayers $34,297.01.  Rather than actually answer the question, she made an interesting statement, which by all indications, does not match what was said in the Insurance Committee meeting nor does it match with what the individual has now documented.

Kroncke – “I spoke at length with Travis who is the vice president of Consociate, I spoke to on the phone at length, he said, he has said repeatedly from the beginning there is no evidence of fraud”

What did Travis say during the Insurance Committee meeting?

“I don’t think he intentionally defrauded the county, as my personal opinion”

He did not say there was no evidence of fraud.

He said he did not think he intentionally defrauded the county, which points to unintentional fraud.  While that may not be prosecutable as a criminal act, it’s clear Petard was not providing truthful answers to the county for months and the statement by the Consociate representative is not quite what the State’s Attorney claimed.

What did the Vice President of Consociate put in writing today, we assume after hearing what was asserted he said by the State’s Attorney?

“I feel that I was clear in stating that I did not feel that he had any malintent or intentional fraud and could not speak to what the claimant was thinking. I never stated that he did or did not commit fraud.”

Did you catch that?  “I never stated that he did or did not commit fraud.”  (Letter from Consociate VP)

While I may have missed it, after three reviews of the video, I find no reference made about evidence by the Consociate representative at all, either in the meeting video or his letter.  How the State’s Attorney concluded he said there is no evidence of fraud is perplexing.

On the subject of “no evidence of fraud“, how do we know, if the person has never been questioned?

• Was a criminal investigation opened to get to the whole truth of the matter?  – No
• Do we know if he applied for Medicare and then never made the required payments?  That issue was raised by the Consociate representative in the meeting. – No
• How is denying being on Medicare month after month not evidence of a fraudulent statement? 
• Why was he allowed to be several months past due on his insurance payments and still received benefits? Another fact that came out during the insurance committee.

Typically any potential criminal activity is investigated, to include questioning the person alleged to have made false statements.  Not the case in this matter.  The Board member’s question was sidestepped with a statement that fell well short of answering his question and only raised more concerns as to what was actually said by the Consociate representative.

It appears the powers to be are in full protection mode to do nothing to recover what was clearly inappropriate tax dollar expenditures on health benefits outside the established policy guidelines.  We have no clue if any of this was criminal or not, but we do know the refusal to even question, or at a minimum, send a demand letter to the person responsible for this loss is unacceptable.  Civil action could be taken, but again, Bryon Coffman and Teresa Boehm have decided for the entire county that nothing will be done.

For the record, There were three cameras videotaping the County Board meeting last night.  The one used in the top clip above is from our camera and the audio was boosted for clarity.  Nothing was edited other than boosting the audio.

The video from the Insurance Committee was captured from County Board Member Dereck Pearcy’s Youtube page.  Pearcy is a man who in our opinion has impeccable integrity and would never alter a video to give a false impression. Nothing was edited other than boosting the audio.

We make these points about video editing because we received word there have been accusations that editing is taking place to change the words spoken by the elected officials.  We have never edited any videos in such a fashion and any accusation of such an act is a total lie, but not surprising considering the multiple false statements we routinely expose by elected officials.

Both videos can be seen in their entirety at these links.

County Board meeting

Insurance Committee Meeting