South Bend, Ind. — County Auditor Mike Hamann has confirmed with REAL News Michiana that the county has opened a new investigation into potential fraudulent time punches by the former Democrat Board Member of the St. Joseph County Voter Registration Office, Arielle Brandy.
“I can confirm there is an investigation. The county commissioners have directed me to pull everything and send it to county attorneys. I’m happy that it’s finally being looked into and I’m confident they’ll do the right thing.” Hamann said.
This new county investigation comes after RNM’s story uncovered several discrepancies from her time cards and text messages she sent to fellow colleagues in the office, during a nearly 2 month period in 2018. You can read that story and see all of the documentation here.
RNM has also received a new audit of the timecards from that same time period that show even more discrepancies. The audit shows in and out punches, the actual time they were entered, any edits that had been made and who was making them.
Aside from days off, nearly ALL of the IN punches were made long after the time Brandy indicated she was at work, 16 of her OUT punches were made long before the time she indicated she was off of work, 21 punches (both in and out) were completed a day or more later and multiple punches were edited days after the original punches to show more time worked. Some days show a discrepancies of 15-30 minutes. Other days have discrepancies in the hours.
For instance, on February 9th, at 10:36am, Brandy notated on her timecard that she started work at 9:30am. 11 days later, she changed that time to 9:00am, showing she had worked an additional half-hour that day. Making the discrepancy go from 1-hour-and-6-minutes to an-hour-and-36-minutes. She did the same thing for a punch on February 7th, by editing her timecard 8 days later showing she had worked an additional 15 minutes.
Many discrepancies are hard to assess since Brandy would fill out the time card a day or more later. However, the discrepancies from day-of punches show nearly 80 hours of unaccounted time worked, based on the timesheets. Based on her salary at the time, that would account for approximately $1,500 in taxpayer money through that two month period. Below is a copy of the audit report received by RNM.
Brandy, who went to work for Pete Buttigieg’s presidential campaign and is currently the president of Indiana Young Democrats, has recently announced her bid to run for the Secretary of Young Democrats of America. In her announcement on Twitter, she stated she is working to create “a culture of inclusivity, accountability and transparency.”
“When I saw these punches, I was like ‘Wow, this is a hot potato.’” County Auditor, Mike Hamann, said to RNM when we started digging into this story a few weeks ago. Below is information RNM first reported two weeks ago.
Hamann tells RNM he received an anonymous set of text messages along with claims that Brandy had been falsifying timesheets about a year ago. He immediately did an audit of every employee in the office.
“There were some discrepancies with a few (employees in the Voter Registration office) here and there. That happens. This individual had much more. I immediately forwarded it to the county attorney.” Hamann said. “He got everything you (RNM) got.”
RNM called County Attorney, Pete Agostino, who confirmed his office did receive the information from the County Auditor’s office about a year ago.
“Allegations were made. There was some investigation, but no findings of any falsifications.” Agostino initially said.
When RNM told Agostino about information received from the Auditor’s office, he deferred to Auditor Mike Hamann as the expert.
“There may be more information that I didn’t have access to.” Agostino said. “(Hamann) would have access to that information.”
“Pete Agostino got everything that was sent to you. It is astounding to me that anyone could look at those timecards and not come to the conclusion that something was amiss.” Hamann said in response.
According to Agostino, the only person with authority to fire Brandy would be the County Democrat Chair, who was Jason Critchlow at the time. While the position is paid for by county tax dollars, Board Members are appointed by the chairperson of the two major parties.
Brandy’s shift was scheduled to be between 8:00am and 4:30pm. From Jan 30th, to March 23rd, 2018, RNM found that Brandy’s earliest clock-in on the digital system was 8:45am. Every other day was 9:00am or later. However, text messages to her colleagues show many times she was not at work at the time documented.
From Jan 30th, to March 23rd, RNM found 16 days of discrepancies between her time sheets and text messages. Some of the discrepancies account for a minimum of a few minutes, others much longer.
The time sheets also depict Brandy working after business hours nearly everyday. RNM is working to find a way to verify that she was actually in the office at those times. According to several sources at the Voter Registration office, verification of those hours would be difficult because she would have been the only person there. RNM has requested the county auditor’s office check to see if they can tell when and how Brandy was clocking out to see if any discrepancies exist on the back end of the work days.
Multiple text messages refer to the county Democrat Headquarters and the Democrat Chair at the time, Jason Critchlow, with Brandy claiming to be at meetings with Critchlow or at the Democrat HQ. RNM reached out to the St. Joseph County Democrat party for comment, but messages were not returned. Critchlow has also not returned RNM’s messages. Arielle Brandy did not respond to RNM requests for comment to give clarification on the timecard discrepancies either.
RNM asked the county GOP Chair, Zach Potts, if meetings at the GOP headquarters with the Republican Voter Registration Board Member are considered “on the clock.” Potts said it’s usually not the case, but it could be on extremely rare occasions. He added that if he needed to meet with his appointee during business hours, he would go to the Voter Registration office, not have his appointee come to him. Potts said he only needs to meet with his appointee a handful of times per year.
According to Brandy’s LinkedIn account, she worked as the Democrat Board Member of Voter Registration from January 2017, until October 2019. After leaving her job at the Voter Registration office, Brandy worked for Pete Buttigieg’s presidential campaign as the Indiana State Director and in director level leadership for his campaign in South Carolina, according to her LinkedIn profile. Brandy is now the President of Indiana Young Democrats.
RNM independently verified the authenticity of the text messages through multiple sources who wished not to be named out of fear of retaliation. All of the text messages and Brandy’s timesheets are listed at the bottom of the page here for the public to see and compare. Names of personal family members and information from other colleagues in the office have been cut out and redacted.
As a former county employee I would have been terminated after the first changed time card We did not have access to change our times which required Department head approval! So…. what’s up county?
Oh wait…. she left to work on Pete’s campaign… that explains it from one “fact changer to the other”!
She abused her position she was as the Democratic appointee in the Voter Registration office one of the department heads.
She was having an affair with that lying pervert Jason Critchlow!!!!