FARMINGTON — A new audit by Davis County concluded that hundreds of thousands of dollars intended to go to inmates was mismanaged by jail staffers due to a lack of training, a lack of staffing and employees simply not understanding how the money system worked.

The audit found that there were inmates who were missing money and inmates who were wrongly given extra money. It also discovered that cash had been stuffed in cubicles that was supposed to be deposited, and money had been left sitting around for months.

“Due to the poor control environment, it is difficult, if not impossible, to definitively state that all missing monies have been identified and accounted for at this time,” the audit concluded while noting that additional audits would likely be conducted in the coming months.

The Davis County Attorney’s Office was asked to investigate if the mishandling of monies rose to the level of criminal charges. That investigation was handed over to the Farmington Police Department to avoid a conflict of interest and is ongoing.

In a letter to the Davis County Commission dated April 30, Davis County Auditor Curtis Koch said his six-month investigation, looking at the time period between Oct. 1, 2017, and April 2, 2018, found many funds dropped off at the jail by family members to be given to inmates for provisions ended up in a cubicle and remained undeposited.

When a person is booked into jail, inmate funds are held in trust by Davis County and are expected to be deposited into the inmate’s account within three days.

But when auditors went to the jail on April 3, they found nearly $10,000 in cash stashed in a cubicle as well as 274 checks totaling more than $25,000 in commissary funds that had not been deposited. An additional $500 in credit card receipts that were not deposited was also discovered, the report states.

As auditors started digging into older records, they concluded: “Based on the financial records of DCSO, over $126,000 of monies had been receipted and stored in various drawers in the cubicle of (the accountant technician), including almost $25,000 in cash and coin. None of those funds, over 960 individual transactions dating back as far as October of 2017, were deposited in accordance with Utah state statute.”

Auditors were shocked when they went back to the same cubicle a week later and found “even when (sheriff's) employees were aware that an audit was being conducted, poor cash handing practices persisted.”

The auditors found “an unzipped bank deposit bag in the cubicle contained $118 in $1 bills. … To date, no explanation of these funds can be accounted for.”

The audit found that is wasn’t an “uncommon occurrence for monies to be left on desks that were unattended.”

In February, the jail transitioned to a new kiosk system that allows people to send money to inmates electronically. The four kiosks are supposed to be emptied each day and deposits made into a bank account.

But the audit found 4,246 kiosk receipts totaling more than $400,000 that had not been processed. Although the kiosks accomplished the goal of depositing money in a timely manner, the receipts were not being recorded into the county’s financial system, the report found. Receipts related to bail bonds, DNA testing, drug testing and fingerprinting did not appear in the commissary system.

From February through March, more than 2,500 transactions were missing due to “programming errors,” according to the audit. And the audit found nearly $750 of missing money from the kiosks was erroneously given to inmates and spent.

In one example listed in the report, an inmate who was supposed to receive $1,660 was actually given double that amount. Because of that, he was able to post bail 2 ½ hours after being booked into jail and walked out with an extra $335 on his debit card.

In another case, an inmate erroneously received an extra $678, the audit found.

Interviews with Davis County Jail employees found a “lack of consistent and accurate trining” as it related to the handling of cash, according to the report. Other staffers told auditors it was hard to keep up with the workload and perform their other duties at the same time.

In a written response, attached to the audit, business manager Keith Major said staff started to fall behind in distributing payments after an assistant manager left for a new job. An accounting tech was given those responsibilities on top of her own, and fell behind.

“The problem was caused by the shortage of personnel. Everyone else at the sheriff’s office had their tasks and a few extra ones, so there were not the people or capacity to help,” Major said in the written response.

A spokesman for the sheriff’s office declined comment until Farmington’s invsetigation is completed.

The audit is the latest in a recent series of negative reports regarding staff and operations at the Davis County Jail.

Five jail deputies and commanders were disciplined in April and a sixth deputy resigned after an investigative report by Davis County's human resources division found a culture of ongoing sexual harassment at the jail. Earlier this month, it was revealed that two additional deputies were found to have violated the county's harassment policies.

Contributing: Mike Anderson