The Washington Post has published an article explaining what really happened in the Loudoun Sheriff’s office concerning a large embezzlement case and the budget overruns under Chapman.[read_more]
First is Chapman’s 2012 budget which had a budget overrun of over $2 million. In March of 2013 when the Sheriff’s budget was presented to the Board of Supervisors with these overruns, Sheriff Chapman feigned outraged and said his staff had not informed him of this budget deficit. The Post article shows that not be true. Sheriff Chapman said,
“never took the time to really fill me in. . . . I took him (Eric Noble) off the budget because I felt I was blindsided. . . . I had my suspicions I wasn’t being given all the truth.”
The reality is the Sheriff was informed over and over by Deputy Eric Noble, beginning almost a year prior, April 2012, that there were major budget problems. In October of 2012 the sheriff’s office had a meeting, with the sheriff present, where a deficit of $1.6 million was discussed. The Sheriff was “given all the truth”. From the Washington Post,
He (Eric Noble) provided documents from an October 2012 meeting with the sheriff, county administrator Tim Hemstreet and other officials, showing the first quarter of the fiscal year was more than $1 million over budget, and that Chapman“allowed spending to go on unfettered.” Hemstreet and Michelle Draper, a sheriff’s budget manager who later resigned after clashing with Chapman, both confirmed the substance of the meeting.
Chapman was informed that the sheriff’s budget was in big trouble with over a million in cost overruns, in October of 2012, confirmed by two others who were present at the October meeting. When the board of Supervisors got very upset about the overruns, Chapman claimed he knew nothing about it. That is simply not true.
The second big problem for the sheriff is the large case of embezzlement that first came to light in January of 2013. The case is still under investigation.
Chapman said he got the ball rolling in January 2013 when he visited the narcotics unit and found numerous seized vehicles gathering dust, and asked why they were there.
Beginning in February 2013, sheriff’s deputies began serving the paperwork that the deputy had declined to do for years. But the well-liked deputy remained on the job and records show that cash in an additional 22 cases totaling more than $50,000 disappeared between February and October 2013, when the scheme was finally uncovered, apparently by Draper.
Sheriff Chapman let the embezzler stay in his job from January until October 2013 allowing the thief to steal another $50,000!
Chapman said his commanders were trying to figure out a convoluted process and thought “it was more of a process issue than a theft issue.”
In October Chapman tried to take credit for discovering the embezzlement. Not only did he NOT discover the embezzlement, he had allowed it to continue for another 8 months while the county lost another $50,000!
Loudoun’s Commonwealth Attorney Jim Plowman said,
(Eric)Noble “has a far better grasp on how the agency operates and a much clearer understanding of the role of a local law enforcement agency” than Chapman. He said Chapman’s claim that he uncovered an apparent $250,000 embezzlement by one of his deputies “could not be further from the truth.”
While Eric Noble is concerned about huge budget deficits and embezzlement, Chapman continues to focus on emails and blog comments critical of his command.
When Mike Chapman ran for office in 2011, Eric Noble was a big supporter. It was only after working with Chapman for over two years that Noble, like so many other deputies, realized how bad things were under Chapman’s command and things were not getting better. The budget and embezzlement are only two of the issues. The heroin epidemic in Loudoun was another problem that grew year after year under Sheriff Chapman before he took action in just the last few months. There’s also the problem of fewer arrests for drunk driving while the population has increased and such arrests have increased in nearby counties.
Eric Noble had no intention of running against Sheriff Chapman until it became obvious that someone had to challenge him if the sheriff’s office was ever to get back on track. Many deputies have expressed the same frustrations, including some of the men and women who work most closely with the sheriff, but only Noble had the courage to do something about it and challenge Sheriff Mike Chapman.
Washington Post article here.
21 comments
Agree tht it will be a blowout – Chapman will win handily. Three key indicators:
1) Noble’s team twists statistics. Martin’s post earlier clearly showed that Chapman has $37k total, while Noble has $6k. Chapman has SIX TIMES the funding/support of Noble.
2) Noble’s camp sent an email to Chapman’s delegates this week falsely telling them that the convention date has moved. That smacks of desperation and the lack of integrity that has been the hallmark of Noble’s candidacy.
3) Noble took down the debate video from his Facebook page. He is obviously embarrassed by his performance.
Noble’s small, angry cult following will be very embarrassed by this time next week.
Not only did Eric Noble raise roughly 10 times more than Mike Chapman, but the State Board of Elections website shows another large $1,000 contribution received this week. All indications are that Mr. Chapman is a one term candidate.
Yes, it certainly appears the convention will be a blow out.
The comments have not been cut off. That is all.
What will it take for Avatar to finally wake up and smell the roses? A respected WaPo reporter (who once wrote a glowing article about Chapman) does some independent investigating and comes up with proof that Chapman lied about two at least two different things: what he knew about being over budget and when he knew about an embezzling deputy.. The reporter states in the article what many others have known all along. With his silly comments, Avatar is losing whatever credibility he had…. sometimes it’s better to admit your wrong instead of keep on pounding the same old argument, especially when confronted with multiple, credible, and confirmed sources that show your man Chapman has been lying to the citizens about several things.
Seems like Avatars desire to keep the his employment with Chapman is overcoming his ability to reason.
So the Sheriff says he was too busy to notice a $2 million budget overrun (in a state whose Constitution demands a balanced budget). What next – one of the police dogs ate his briefing papers?
False. The sheriff noticed the deficit, identified Noble as the problem, transferred him, took control, and paid back all debts. Thanks to Chapman, the county has seen $4.5 million returned to taxpayers.
That’s how management works. Remove the rotten apples.
Wrong. The Board of Supervisors publicly chastised Chapman for his malfeasance. He ran and hid, them blamed his staff. Chapman couldn’t even keep his lie together, as the documents from Hempstreet’s office revealed.
Amazing how Noble’s angry cult following is determined to give him a free pass for everything. Noble:
1) ran up a budget,
2) took minimal action to fix it,
3) sabotaged his boss, and
4) ran a shadow campaign on the government’s dime
But all that is ok, apparently.
Well, it’s not ok. It’s deceitful, and he cannot be trusted. Noble does not get a free pass.
For over a year Chapman did nothing. He was briefed by Noble over and over and over. Chapman ignored them then when the BOS was on his case about the budget he flat out lied and said he knew nothing about it. I have the facts, I have seen the documents and the timeline of ALL the budget meetings where Chapman was present and informed. He watched the power point presentations and he knew exactly what was about happening.
Its hard to believe, Martin. No one can take your word for anything because of your outlandish distortions. You never produce proof, only innuendo. And if all this documentation exists, where is it?
Only real evidence we’ve seen are numerous emails proving Noble’s treachery.
You used to say http://www.34questions.com was filled with lies. Well, it isn’t, and everyone knows it now.
Neither you nor Noble has any credibility.
Where’s the proof? The proof of the budget issue was provided by Mr. Noble during the debate and now has been verified by 3 others in the WAPO article. As for the embezzlement issue Mr. Plowman gave the statement, “couldn’t be further from the truth”.
The only outlandish distortions are on your website you just can’t stop plugging.
I suppose you also don’t believe Michelle Draper and Tim Hemstreet who confirmed what Eric Noble said.
The only false thing is what you just wrote Avatar. The correct version is that Noble noticed that deficit, attempted to warn Chapman, Chapman and Noble met with County Administrator Hemstreet, Chapman again warned at this time that he was over budget. What does he do? Continues to hemorrhage money. Six months later when called before the Board he professes to not know anything about. The WaPo reporter uncovered Chapman’s lie and the fact that he tried to blame Noble. What a POS move that was. Chapman asked for a much higher budget so yes he was able to “return” money in an attempt to make himself look good. The guy is an egotistical loser.
The citizen voters are the management so yes it time for management to remove the rotten apple: Chapman. That how management (citizen voters) work.
Exactly, Chapman never takes ownership of any decision or accepts any responsibility. He knew about the budget overrun, but he is the epitome of a bureaucrat, deflect, pivot, blame and expect it to be covered by some miracle that is available to feds – continual funding. It’s pitiful.
Another one-sided post, as always. Noble notified Chapman about a $1 million budget overrun once during a high-cost period of time (el Derecho, president, and Vice President visits) and then stood idly by for six months as it doubled. He was NOT doing his job.
Have to wonder if he was manipulating the budget intentionally. $1 million in October is vastly different from $3 million in March. As the article states – where was Noble during that time? Obviously not taking action to fix the problem. And then he watched gleefully as Chapman got pounded in the press, all the while conducting a shadow campaign against him.
Chapman removed him from the job, and has now given the taxpayers back $4.5 million.
Regarding the embezzlement, no news there. The article – and your quotes – clearly state that Chapman didn’t realize it was theft until October 2013 and took swift action. Everything prior to that was figuring out whether it was process failure or personal misconduct.
Martin’s post is yet another Chapman smear attempt by Noble and his angry band of liars.
Tell it to the Washington Post. Look at the front page of today’s Metro section at the article “Loudoun Sheriff’s race gets ugly, Incumbent accused of mismanagement”. Did you miss the part where Chapman’s own budget director left over his mismanagement of the budget?
Did Hemstreet have any duty to react to the budget overdrafts?
Lots of folks developed a break with Chapman two years in, including two senior aides that ran his campaign last time. Now at least one of them has kissed and made up…evidently.
Not really. Check Chapman’s financials, despite being very wealthy, the man you refer to hasn’t given Chapman a dime.
He did. He too blamed Chapman for not paying attention and allowing the overdrafts to continue for a year after he had been notified.