Atlanta's ex-financial chief, Jimmie "Jim" A. Beard, has admitted to fleecing taxpayers by using city funds for personal thrills including music festival jaunts and machine guns, while also gumming up tax laws. In a courtroom mea culpa, Beard confessed to these financial crimes, the Department of Justice revealed Monday. The theft, spanning years from 2011 to 2018, saw Beard living it up on the public dime, including a jaunt for his stepdaughter to Chicago's Lollapalooza and a New Orleans jazz fest getaway, as stated in a press release from the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Northern District of Georgia.
While holding the fiscal reins of Atlanta, Beard apparently treated the city's wallet as his own piggy bank, and, when the IRS honed in for an audit, he cooked the books providing false documents and altered receipts to hide his misdoings, his brazen cash grabs didn't end with personal trips, there were also no-show conference claims and keeping reimbursed funds meant for the city coffers. The U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of Georgia, Ryan K. Buchanan, underscored the abuse of power saying, "Jim Beard abused his power as the CFO for the City of Atlanta to steal tens of thousands of dollars from taxpayers to fund personal trips, luxuries, and even custom-built machine guns, then lied to the IRS and submitted altered records when called to account for suspicious write-offs," the fallout erodes trust in public servants, further stated by Buchanan in the announcement.
FBI Atlanta's Special Agent in Charge, Keri Farley, echoed the sentiment emphasizing that the pursuit of such corruption is a primary objective, aiming to restore faith in civic leadership. Moreover, IRS Criminal Investigation Acting Special Agent in Charge, Demetrius Hardeman, reminded the public that officials like Beard are entrusted with city affairs, yet when they instead rob the city blind, justice will swoop in. Amongst the items splurged on by Beard was a pair of custom-built machine guns, totaling over $2,600, falsely claiming they were for the Atlanta Police Department. The arrest and plea are part of efforts by various federal agencies to nip such misconduct in the bud and spotlight the consequences faced by crooked officials, as elaborated in the DOJ's press release.
The sentencing phase for Beard, 60, now looms on the calendar, set for July 12, and while the guidelines are suggestive rather than prescriptive, they lay out a framework for punishment fitting the financial felonies committed by Beard. This saga of fiscal malpractice was unearthed by teamwork amongst the FBI, IRS Criminal Investigation, and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, with Assistant U.S. Attorneys Garrett Bradford and Tiffany Johnson, DOJ Trial Attorney Trevor Wilmot, and former Assistant U.S. Attorney Jeffrey Davis prosecuting the case, for those craving more details, the U.S. Attorney's Public Affairs Office can be reached, as identified in their stockpile of releases.
