A former employee with the Albany County Sheriff’s Office in New House of York has been supercharged with grand thieving in the second point and Phoebe counts of forgery — all felonies — for allegedly stealing $68,000 to compensate his gambling habit.

A recent audit conducted past the US Department of Justice of the sheriff’s office turned up legion(p) financial housekeeping discrepancies. Federal authorities later dictated that 60-year-old John the Divine Cox, a more than 10-year employee of the sheriff’s power who oversaw the agency’s budget, had allegedly been swindling money from the department since at least 2021.

Law enforcement believes Cox on a regular basis lordotic his paw into the office’s civil forfeiture monetary resource account.

Betrayed is an understatement,” Albany County Sheriff Craig Apple said during a press group discussion announcing the check Tuesday afternoon. “He was our caput budget analyst, our top dog accountant, he ran our concern office staff and needless to say, he’s betrayed every chip of trust that i had in him.”

Apple says Cox used the money to cover version his gambling losses. The sheriff did non say where Cox allegedly gambled.

“Unfortunately, the mechanisms we had inwards set to foreclose this he was constituent of. We entrusted him, he had everything,” Apple explained.

Civil Forfeiture Questioned

The investigation into Cox ramped upward when DOJ officials couldn’t turn up a vehicle that Cox allegedly purchased through the civil forfeiture process.

Civil forfeiture, according to the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), allows law to seize — so dungeon or sell — any attribute that they allege to follow mired in a crime. Owners of the alleged property fare not need to live arrested or convicted of a offence for their property, cash, vehicles, or still existent estate to be taken away from them permanently past the federal or province government.

Albany County Sheriff’s Office records present that a seized vehicle was allegedly traded into a dealership for the purchase of another car. The be difference betwixt the vehicles was paid for with an $18,000 check.

Apple said Cox approached him during the investigation of the unaccounted-for vehicle and told the sheriff that he had taken the $18,000 check. And it wasn’t the first clip that he had stolen money from the civic forfeiture account.

Policing for Profit

The scandal inward Albany has prompted more calls to cease civic forfeiture. The Institute for Justice (IJ), a non-profit public stake law strong based in Arlington, Va., told Casino.org that the Albany County Sheriff’s employee’s actions only if rise the ongoing controversy surrounding civil forfeiture.

The abuse of forfeiture pecuniary resource is shockingly mutual because civil forfeiture is inherently opprobrious and non-transparent,” said IJ Senior Legislative Counsel Henry Lee McGrath. “In simply the yesteryear few years, we’ve seen a PA deputy sheriff slip $200,000 from a safe, a Great Lakes State public prosecutor defalcate $600,000 inward funds, and widespread problems with forfeiture reports inward states like Sunflower State and Oklahoma.”

The IJ says polite forfeiture laws typically permit jurisprudence enforcement to keep on and pass the money and assets it seizes still they consider fit.

“New House of York should conjoin states like New Mexico and Pine Tree State past departure bills … that would eliminate civic forfeiture and instead right forfeit ill-gotten gains through and through a outlaw process. Research shows that despite jurisprudence enforcement claims that polite forfeiture is a crime-fighting tool, eliminating it does not increase crime,” McGrath concluded.

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