Middle GA Goodwill now seeking criminal charges against ex-CFO. Not so fast, cops say
There is for now an apparent impasse in a matter involving an ex-chief financial officer for Goodwill Industries of Middle Georgia, who the organization contends used a company credit card to make more than $76,000 in “personal, unauthorized transactions.”
A non-criminal complaint that Goodwill filed Aug. 23 with the sheriff’s department in Morgan County said that former CFO Tim Ligon, who lives in that county, had made the allegedly fraudulent purchases during parts of the seven most recent years.
Ligon was fired this spring after the allegations came to light, the complaint said.
In a supplemental report written soon after the late-August complaint, sheriff’s officials noted that Goodwill “was not seeking criminal prosecution of this case, but simply needed a law enforcement incident report to provide to their insurance company.”
The sheriff’s report also mentioned that Goodwill had earlier sent Ligon a letter allowing him until Aug. 7 to “pay back” the allegedly improper $76,593 in credit card purchases. The report said that “Ligon signed and returned the letter to Goodwill, however he has not made any payments.”
Last week, when the episode was reported by area news outlets, Goodwill issued a public statement saying that it was “cooperating fully with its insurance company and law enforcement to ensure the matter is appropriately investigated and addressed.”
Seeking criminal charges
But this week, in a Tuesday news release, Goodwill said that its board of directors’ executive committee had since “voted unanimously” to accept the organization’s audit committee’s recommendation to “seek criminal charges against Mr. Ligon and to seek the restitution of funds Mr. Ligon admitted he misappropriated.”
Sheriff’s officials in Morgan County, however, now say that according to prosecutors the letter that Ligon supposedly signed allowing him until early August to repay the alleged charges served as a civil agreement, one that potentially insulates Ligon from facing criminal charges.
“There really is nothing that law enforcement can do,” Keith Howard, chief deputy of the Morgan sheriff’s office, said Wednesday.
“That is not a criminal matter,” Howard added. “That is a civil matter. They had a contract (the signed letter) with Mr. Ligon.”
Howard said Goodwill officials were as recently as Wednesday morning informed that sheriff’s investigators in Morgan County would not be pursuing criminal charges against Ligon.
Ligon, who is in his mid-50s, was hired by Goodwill as a chief financial officer in 2008. He did not immediately return a voicemail message seeking comment Wednesday.
Macon-based Goodwill Industries of Middle Georgia and the Central Savannah River Area serve 31 counties in Georgia and four in South Carolina.
Local Goodwill President James K. “Jim” Stiff told The Telegraph on Wednesday that the organization had first filed its complaint in Morgan County because that is where Ligon lives and where most of the allegedly improper credit card purchases were made.
“So we’ve got now the interest in going to another (jurisdiction) within our territory that might prosecute him. So I think that’s kind of the next step,” Stiff said.
He declined to specify any of the items that Ligon is said to have bought using Goodwill’s credit card.
“It’s things,” Stiff said, “that when you look at it you go, ‘That’s obscenely obvious that that’s got nothing to do with Goodwill.’”