The now-deceased, longtime director of Meigs County's Emergency Communications District misappropriated more than $1 million over an almost 10-year period, according to a Tennessee comptroller's investigative report.
The 45-year-old former director, Kelly Finnell Taylor, died Feb. 21, 2021, thus, no charges were filed in the case, comptroller's officials said in the report. The investigation accused Taylor of misappropriating at least $1,084,188.60 between between July 29, 2011, and Feb. 17, 2021.
The results of the investigation were communicated to the 9th Judicial District Attorney General's Office. The judicial district consists of Loudon, Meigs, Morgan and Roane counties.
Meigs County Mayor Bill James did not return a call seeking comment Wednesday. The chairman of the E911 board, Hugh Bryan, could not be reached Wednesday for comment.
Meigs' 911 district is funded primarily by a 911 surcharge collected by communications service providers, according to the report. Day-to-day operations and finances of the district are managed by the director, who reports to the board.
Comptroller's office investigators determined Taylor misappropriated the vast majority of the district's money by falsifying invoices from both real and fictitious vendors and then cashing district checks written to pay the phony invoices, according to a news release from the comptroller. In some instances, she also forged the signatures of board members on checks and forged the signature endorsements of vendors to cash the checks, investigators said.
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Taylor also provided falsified financial reports to the board and omitted expenditures from those reports to conceal her misappropriation. The reports were intended to convince the board that the district's spending was within budget, officials said.
Additionally, investigators discovered the former director received a duplicate travel reimbursement and used work-assigned assets, such as a work cellphone, for personal use.
"The district's board must ensure it provides adequate oversight to prevent fraud, waste and abuse," Tennessee Comptroller Jason E. Mumpower said in the release. "The board allowed the former director to have complete control over the district's financial documents and bank statements. This allowed the former director to falsify checks on a near-daily basis. The board also failed to correct 13 years of repeated audited findings related to segregation of duties and overspending."
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The report also faulted the Meigs County Sheriff's Office for failing to maintain and protect electronic evidence in the investigation of the case -- Taylor's cellphone.
"Despite being aware of the active investigation being conducted by the Comptroller's Office, sheriff's department officials did not properly secure, log or enter the phone as evidence, did not maintain documentation of the chain of custody of the cellphone and ultimately released the cellphone to parties outside the sheriff's department and Comptroller's Office, who deleted all data from the phone before Comptroller's Office investigators could review the phone for content potentially relevant to this case," the report states.
Meigs County Sheriff Jackie Melton was out of the office Wednesday and couldn't be reached for comment.
The report notes Meigs 911 officials "indicated that they have corrected or intend to correct these deficiencies," the document states.
According to her 2021 obituary, Taylor had been an employee of the 911 office for 27 years.
Contact Ben Benton at bbenton@timesfreepress.com or 423-757-6569. Follow him on Twitter @BenBenton.