Ex-Spring Lake finance director pleads guilty to embezzling $500,000

The former finance director of Spring Lake has pleaded guilty to embezzling more than $500,000 from the small Cumberland County town, which hired her to the position despite numerous bankruptcies, tax liens and unpaid bills.

Gay Cameron Tucker faces up to 12 years in federal prison for financial crimes stretching between 2016 and 2021.

Federal officials said the 64-year-old Fayetteville woman wrote herself checks from the town’s bank accounts, forged the mayor’s name and other town employees’ signatures, and deposited the money in her own accounts.

“Public officials are entrusted to protect public funds,” said U.S. Attorney Michael Easley in a news release. “This defendant breached the public’s trust by using public funds intended for her local community to pay her own personal expenses. Public corruption is a crime that affects all of us and undermines our public institutions.”

The guilty plea stems from an investigation from State Auditor Beth Wood, a Democrat, and Treasurer Dale Folwell, a Republican, who spent months digging into potential corruption and waste. Located in Cumberland County on the edge of Fort Bragg, just outside Fayetteville, the town’s 12,000 residents include many current and retired soldiers.

In 2016, while working in Spring Lake as an accounting technician, Tucker was given “day to day” oversight of the purchasing cards, making sure only those assigned to one could use them, records show.

That move was triggered by 2016 audit stemming from Spring Lake’s missing money and purchasing card abuse, which forced town officials to make a plan to better track their spending.

In 2020, the town board voted 3-2 to give Tucker charge of town finances and pay her a $71,000 salary. One alderwoman objected at the time, saying she had not talked to Tucker and that Tucker had not submitted an application or resume, according to minutes from the board meeting.

Shortly after Tucker left the town’s employment — fired in 2021, the most recent audit said — the state’s Local Government Commission announced it would take control of Spring Lake’s finances.

The LGC continued to sort through Spring Lake’s problems once the audit made them explicit.

In April, it voted unanimously to send a letter to Mayor Kia Anthony and the town board expressing “deep concern” over lack of compliance with state laws and reluctance to work with LGC staff. That rose from Spring Lake obtaining a $1 million loan to build a fire station without required approval and the absence of invoices from the outgoing town attorney.

“The lack of transparency and inadvisable governance issues that are occurring in Spring Lake are disturbing,” Folwell said in a news release at the time. “The fact they are continuing even after a scathing state audit that found more than a half-million dollars in wrongful and questionable spending, as well as dozens of town-owned vehicles that are unaccounted for, is even more flagrant.”

Tucker has not commented publicly since the allegations emerged in March. She pleaded guilty to one count of embezzlement from a local government receiving federal funds, and one count of aggravated identity theft.

Town moving forward

Interim Town Manager Joe Durham, formerly of Wake County, said the guilty plea helps Spring Lake move forward, but progress is already underway.

“The town has already moved forward and implemented a lot of the policies and procedures related to financial management and internal controls,” he said. “It just adds more of a psychological thing in terms of closure.”

Durham, selected as temporary manager in April, said he will serve a few more weeks while a permanent manager is recruited. Hiring a new finance director will top that new manager’s list.

At the time Spring Lake first granted Tucker financial power, her family was already experiencing its own serious money problems. Their Chapter 13 bankruptcy filing reported zero family income and also showed that both Tucker’s income and the family car had been seized as payment toward a state income tax lien.

As she rose in town management to become finance director, she abused her authority to quietly pocket $430,000 in town money, the state audit released in March found.

A quarter of the money she took paid for her husband’s expenses at a senior living center, reported in the bankruptcy filing to be more than $2,000 a month. Tucker wrote 13 checks for $113,015 from the town’s account to Heritage Place Senior Living, according to the 2022 audit. She wrote 72 checks in all for “personal use.”

“If the Town had followed the recommendations from the 2016 report, developed a detailed corrective action plan, including an estimated date for implementation and who was responsible for the corrective action, and ensured the plan was put in place and followed by Town employees, the issues found in this investigation, especially those that are repeated from the 2016 investigation, may not have occurred,” the 2022 audit report said.