Ex-DA Says Charges Against Former Secretary Unfounded

A former secretary in the Douglas County District Attorney’s Office was indicted last week by a grand jury on 34 counts of false statements and writings and 24 counts of theft by taking.

According to a press release from the Georgia Attorney General’s Office, Tammie Agan is accused of obtaining more than $7,000 through the fraudulent billing to the Douglas DA’s Office. She was indicted on the charges on July 25.

The press release included the following:

While employed by the District Attorney’s Office, [Agan] earned extra income by typing transcripts from law enforcement interviews and jail phone calls, for which she was paid an hourly rate. She was issued a desktop computer to have at her house for this purpose.

The indictment alleges that many of Ms. Agan’s time sheets for both 2011 and 2012 were fraudulent. Investigation revealed that she was signed in to work as a state employee during times that transcript work was being done on her home computer.

The indictment further alleges that from January to March of 2013, Ms. Agan submitted three invoices for transcripts that she did not prepare, but rather were duplicative of transcripts that other secretaries had prepared. Agan was paid for these invoices from the Douglas County Post-Forfeiture Account.

Ms. Agan’s daughter, Ali Agan, was given the opportunity to proofread transcripts for $400 per month. She was to do the work on the county desktop computer at her mother’s home on weekends she was home from college. Computer forensics showed that no work had been done on the county desktop computer from January to April of 2013, even though checks had been issued to Ali Agan. The indictment contends that Ms. Agan negotiated each of the checks issued to Ali Agan.

None of Ali Agan’s timesheets for the transcript work could be located when the county was audited in May 2013. Ms. Agan subsequently produced what she purported to be Ali Agan’s timesheets for September 2012 through April 2013 on May 24, 2013.

False Statements and Writings carries a penalty of one to five years in prison and/or a fine up to $1,000. Theft by Taking (felony) carries a penalty of one to five years in prison and/or a fine up to $100,000, while Theft by Taking (misdemeanor) is punishable by up to 12 months in prison and and/or a fine up to $1,000.

Assistant Attorney General Blair McGowan is prosecuting this case on behalf of the State of Georgia. The case was investigated by Special Agent Rocky Bigham of the Georgia Bureau of Investigation.

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported Agan’s claims were allegedly taken from drug forfeiture funds. Agan and two of her children working in the office were fired by acting DA Brian Fortner days after former DA David McDade retired in April amid accusations of improper spending. McDade and his office was the target of a state investigation into alleged misuse of drug-forfeiture funds.

The Douglas County Sentinel reported McDade resigned and paid the county $4,000 for gray-area expenditures as part of an agreement with the state Attorney General’s Office, but admitted no wrong-doing.

McDade told WSB-TV that Agan did nothing wrong, calling the charges “ridiculous” and saying there is no evidence that she stole any money.