A fired City of Gainesville employee has been charged in what city officials say was a one-point-two-million-dollar embezzlement scheme.
Former Gainesville Department of Water Resources (DWR) Maintenance Superintendent Carl Timothy “Tim” Tench, 66, of Gainesville, was taken into custody Friday by the Hall County Sheriff’s Office (HCSO) on warrants issued by the Gainesville Police Department (GPD). GPD has charged Tench with nearly 100 counts of various felony crimes in connection with an elaborate scheme concocted to steal DWR funds totaling approximately $1.5 million.
“We discovered during an internal audit this spring irregularities connected to HVAC (heating, ventilation and air conditioning) purchases through the Department of Water Resources,” said Gainesville City Manager Bryan Lackey. “We began an internal investigation through which we uncovered a pattern of bid-rigging and fraud using the City’s purchasing system. We took immediate action by terminating the employee and working with the Gainesville Police Department to build an evidence-heavy case resulting in an arrest.”
Tench allegedly stole hundreds of thousands of dollars incrementally over several years by rigging bids for equipment – specifically HVAC units – he purchased on behalf of DWR. After securing low bids under a different identity and procuring checks for the HVAC units by submitting legitimate, but inflated purchase orders through the City’s municipal accounting software, Tench would use a fraction of the checks to purchase the HVAC units, then pocket the difference.
He’s now facing the following charges, though additional charges could be forthcoming: 33 felony counts of bid-rigging, 33 felony counts of forgery in the first degree, and 33 felony counts of filing false documents, amounting to 99 charges total as of today. Tench bonded out of the Hall County Jail Saturday.
Employed by the City for 14 years, Tench was first hired as a DWR maintenance operator in April 2012. He eventually held the title of DWR maintenance operator supervisor from November 2014 until promoted in November 2019 to the role he had at the time of his firing June 17.
On top of its annual third-party financial audit, the City has since initiated a secondary audit of all departments in search of fraud and operational misconduct, with no findings to report.