Scandal Central
Believe it or not, the small sleepy city of Paducah, Kentucky always has some sort of low level scandal going on at all times. You have cops resigning for inappropriate non-sexual contact of a sexual nature while on duty. A hotelier holding out to be paid to leave town, and a hotel he could not afford so the city could buy it and tear it down. The city buys a Convention Bouncy specifically for one yearly event, puts it on land they do not own and then attempt to circumvent the building code in the name of ice skating. And then you got a guy named Steve Dolittle. Basically, there has never been a job opening the City has felt he could not fill.
Come to find out today the executive director of the Julian M. Carroll Convention and Paducah Expo Centers embezzled somewhere around $200,000.00 in the past year. If don’t know where the convention and expo center is, do not worry. It’s obvious you have not been there since (a) you realized a wedding themed after anything Bristol Broadcasting promoted would be cheaper than champale (b) Dr. Kelly’s office moved to Reidland or (c) J.R.’s Pub finally fell off and floated down the Ohio. This place is supposed to bring in people to convent about things, or to expose others to stuff. Last time I was down that way, the only thing I saw was a convent of nuns running from a man who was exposing himself.
So to sum this scandal up, a cat named John Patrick Kerr, Jr. had been scamming the Paducah-McCracken County Convention Center Corporation – “PMC4″ for our purposes – out of at least $68,000.00 bucks a years while pretending to be the executive director. Well, that was the part of the scam PMC4 cannot deny knowing about because it was his salary. That was actually up almost $8,000.00 from when he started. Kerr got a fleece increase because he met or set a bunch of “benchmarks” and worked “unusual and extra hours to accommodate events.” For instance, he worked a lot of extra hours around the end of the month when bank statements would be mailed, and also the last couple weeks before April 15th each year.
The PMC4 gave a press conference where they stated Kerr’s evil genius first came to after Paducah Bank gave notice a specially trained bank teller had noticed a sticky note attached to a check indicating someone was not suppose to forget to bring someone their half of the money. The teller’s handler could not be reached for comment. Paducah Bank released a statement saying, “We knew the investment in note-detecting trained tellers would pay off. This is exactly the type of fraud that is perpetrated every day by the misuse of sticky notes and we here at Paducah Bank are not going to just sit around and take note of it anymore.” The bank then alerted the previously fiscally comatose PMC4, who sprung into action and quickly realized no one should be getting half. After an intense investigation from Friday through Sunday, the PMC4 had cracked what has been described by some as an intricate scheme. Apparently, Kerr would write “single-signature account checks” to an alleged embezzlebell named Susan Wilson. She was posing as what is known in the convention and expo world as a “vendor”, and would issue Kerr fake invoices, cash the checks, obey the sticky notes and give him his half. It was intricate because he worked there but actually signed his own name, instead of forging another person’s to the checks he apparently was not authorized to sign. Contrary to reports, Wilson did not have a mobile cart or stand outside of the convention center selling fake documents.
How in the hell can a place in Paducah that is hemorrhaging almost a quarter of a million bucks, which is run by a government affiliated entity, not notice a whole bunch of what little money they have is being spent with just one vendor? I guarantee you the only time a sole entity was the main cash flow of that joint was The Silver Saddle just after the premiere of Urban Cowboy and in the heyday of the Charlie Daniels Band. The place has about one or two conventions a year at the most. One of them is some bridal thing and the other requires you to either fail or pass some sort of health test. You never know which one is going on until you show up. It is ridiculous anyone tries to keep that place alive. In fact, during the flood of Ought Eleven, after the million whatever renovation the City and County joined in on, it was determined that, if the flood water rose past a certain point, it would be able to convene and expose itself as much as it wanted all over Julian Carroll’s architectural namesake. The City finally paid a guy to sell off the hotel not worthy of Baltic or Mediterranean Avenues and tore it down. However, the structure still standing appears to have been abandoned like the square building block that could not be shoved into the rectangular hole by the slobbery -handed baby that is governmental waste is still standing.
Kerr and Wilson perpetrated their evil scheme of writing and cashing checks on a board of citizens and hope-to-do-wells and a bank who apparently did nothing but sit around and wait to be given “note-ice” something was wrong. Just from an office supply standpoint, why didn’t anyone ask Kerr where all those checks were going? To embezzle enough to support Tony Montana’s cocaine habit, you’ve got to be going through a couple saplings worth a day. If Kerr was really doing enough business to write that many checks and generate enough paperwork to fool the PMC4 into believing the place needed money to actually operate – as opposed to just keep the utilities on because it was vacant – the Super Shredder would have been swinging by every couple of days. The bank statements no one was paying attention had to be as thick as phone books because of the copies of the checks. Rumor has it a couple of law firms were close to sealing deals to put magnets on them.
How did whoever balance their books? I get this picture of the PMC4 handing a bunch of wadded up receipts, some pocket lint and a gum wrapper to their CPA. I don’t know enough about taxes to go any further with this.
Steve Dolittle was appointed the acting executive director to take over where Kerr stole off. Most people around here remember Dolittle from his most recent government employee incarnation as executive director of the Paducah Renaissance Alliance. It makes sense they would bring in Dolittle because he needs two more city-county government related jobs to get a set of gold plated steak knives. It also makes sense because he has been executively directing an Alliance to rebirth Paducah, and what better place needs rebirthing than the convention and exposition center? As of today, there has been no word on whether or not he will executively direct rebirthing, conveneing and exposing simultaneously. It all sounds rather arduous.
