OPELOUSAS, La. (KLFY) – The Opelousas mayor must turn himself into the St. Landry Parish Sheriff’s Office by 9 a.m., according to court documents.

ORIGINAL STORY: A St. Landry Parish Grand Jury handed down an indictment including 15 counts of Malfeasance in Office to Opelousas Mayor Reggie Tatum.

Five counts were for injuring public records.

Four counts were for filing false records.

Five other counts were for forging time-sheets for himself and four council members,

And one count was for theft more than $5,000 but less than $25,000.

“We ended up finding out he was paid $13,000 dollars from the city as a result of the flood,” says Director of Investigative Audit Roger Harris.

Harris spearheaded the report that detailed Tatum’s fraud charges.

He says Tatum found a loophole while working to rebuild after the devastation.

“Somewhere along the line the mayor found out FEMA would be willing to pay overtime to anybody who was working in a different role than they normally worked in,” says Harris.

Tatum was already on salary, but investigators say he seized the opportunity to squeeze every last drop out of his work.

“For which he ultimately told the city to reimburse him almost $13,000 dollars of money for the 234 hours of overtime that he did,” says Harris.

In May, Mayor Tatum told News 10 FEMA representatives instructed him to record overtime hours worked by himself and city employees, an alleged protocol he only learned of at a FEMA meeting on disaster procedure for reimbursement.

“I had no reason to doubt them. I was just following what they told me to do” the mayor said during an interview early this year,” Tatum explained.

Some residents accused Tatum of using city money to pay himself and employees for overtime logged during the August flood.

In September 2016, they claimed Tatum collected overtime illegally, but he said he didn’t do anything wrong.

When we spoke with Mayor Tatum over the phone Tuesday afternoon, he said he had not heard about the charges and would speak to his lawyer to find out more.