A former Savannah finance company employee has been sentenced to nearly two years in prison after pleading guilty to stealing more than $1.6 million in forged checks to keep up a gambling habit, the U.S. Attorney’s Office announced Friday.
Dean Emerson Flake, 58, was sentenced to 20 months in federal prison on a guilty plea of committing bank fraud in the check-writing scheme, authorities said. He will have 13 months of home confinement following the prison stint plus three years of supervised release.
A resident of Brooklet, Ga., near Statesboro, Flake was charged with stealing from a Savannah finance firm at which he worked as an accountant for nearly 35 years by writing checks to himself from his company’s account and forging signatures to do it.
Explaining the stiff prison sentence, U.S. Attorney Bobby Christine said in a statement that Flake had “squandered his opportunity to earn an honest living” and “thus will now dine in a prison cafeteria.”
“Stealing from your own long-time employer displays callous disregard for those who have placed employees in positions of trust,” Christine said.
Authorities did not identify the Savannah company from which Flake stole.
Voters wait in line at a precinct in Cobb County on May 18, 2020. (Photo by Beau Evans)
A state House committee probing issues that occurred during the June 9 primary elections in Georgia released a report Thursday outlining stumbles with absentee ballots and the state’s new voting machines that prompted long lines and steep concerns ahead of the Nov. 3 general election.
The report, compiled by the Georgia House Governmental Affairs Committee, recommended tighter coordination between the Secretary of State’s office and local elections boards to prevent and respond to problems, as well as extending the amount of time local officials have to count absentee ballots.
The House committee’s report followed four days of testimony in June and August from Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, his staff, poll workers, county election officials, poll watchers and state lawmakers.
More than 1.6 million Georgians applied for absentee ballots ahead of the primary after state officials decided to send every registered voter an application form for the primary, which led to a historically huge number of mail-in votes.
But many voters testified to not receiving their absentee ballots at all after requesting them, according to the House report. In some cases, applications were sent to deceased voters or to incorrect addresses.
Voters who applied for absentee ballots but chose to vote in-person on Election Day also contributed to long lines since they had to formally cancel their mail-in ballots prior to voting at a polling place, the report noted.
Raffensperger’s office has repeatedly attributed the brunt of absentee-ballot issues to Fulton County election officials who were overwhelmed with a wave of mail-in requests and struggled to process ballots on Election Day.
Additionally, the House report released Thursday included testimony on printer failures, ballot scanners and “general malfunctions” with the state’s new voting machines.
The primary elections marked the biggest tests of the new $104 million ballot-marking devices that rolled out earlier this year after the General Assembly passed legislation requiring that the state’s old voting machines be replaced.
According to the House report, insufficient training for poll workers on the new machines ahead of the election led to issues involving delays with troubleshooting the machines and “a lack of clear instruction for machine usage” during the primary.
The COVID-19 pandemic also threw a major wrench into the equation, the report found. With fewer poll workers and voting locations, plus unsure training for some workers, the health concerns caused by the virus “contributed to less training opportunities and longer waits on Election Day,” the report says.
“Many of the issues caused by COVID-19 served to compound the other delays and problems that were reported from Election Day,” the report says.
The report recommends local election officials create contingency plans ahead of elections and coordinate more closely with the Secretary of State’s office to improve training. Local officials should be allowed to count absentee ballots at the start of early voting, the report recommends.
It also recommends making sure each polling place has enough electricity to handle their voting machines, creating an absentee-ballot tracking program to reduce the need for in-person cancellations and requiring polling places to have paper ballots on hand in case of equipment issues.
The general election on Nov. 3 is poised for much larger turnout than the primaries with a presidential contest, both of Georgia’s U.S. Senate seats, Congressional, state and local offices all on the ballot.
Raffensperger’s office is pushing to increase the number of poll workers to reduce the chances for the sort of long lines and know-how issues that were seen in the June 9 primaries.
Absentee ballots have started being mailed out to voters who requested them for the Nov. 3 election. Early voting begins Oct. 12.
ATLANTA – Georgia’s economy isn’t back to pre-pandemic levels, but it’s making significant strides.
Unemployment in Georgia fell by 2 percentage points last month to 5.6%, the state Department of Labor reported Thursday. That’s well below the national unemployment rate for August of 8.4% and less than half the 12.6% state jobless rate back in April.
“We anticipated a drop in the unemployment rate, as we have seen many businesses reengaging in the economy and bringing employees back to work,” Georgia Commissioner of Labor Mark Butler said.
Initial unemployment claims for August were down by 50% from July to 247,623, while new claims have dropped by more than 1.1 million since April.
“We have recovered more than 65% of the jobs lost since the pandemic began in mid-March,” Butler said. “After the substantial decline in employment in April, these types of increases are exactly what we need to get us back on course.”
The labor department issued $485 million in state and federal benefits last week, including the first checks provided through the Lost Wages Assistance (LWA) program, an initiative President Donald Trump announced last month after Congress failed to reach an agreement to extend an earlier federal program that expired at the end of July.
The LWA, funded by the Federal Emergency Management Agency, is providing six weekly $300 supplements to unemployed workers, half of the amount they were getting under the earlier program. The first three weeks were paid out last week, to be followed by the other three weeks of checks this week.
From March 21 through the end of last week, the labor department has processed nearly 3.7 million first-time unemployment claims, more than the last eight years combined.
During that period, the accommodation and food services job sector has accounted for the most claims with 883,369. The health care and social assistance sector is next with 430,498 claims, followed by retail trade with 394,342.
Nearly 151,000 jobs are listed online at EmployGeorgia.com for Georgians to access, more than double the total listed at the beginning of the pandemic.
Gov. Brian Kemp’s chief of staff is stepping down to take a job in the private sector after working with the governor on campaigns and in elected offices over the course of nearly two decades in Georgia.
Tim Fleming was tapped as Kemp’s chief of staff shortly after the Republican won the 2018 gubernatorial race and has helped shepherd the governor’s policies through the devastating COVID-19 pandemic.
He will step down at the end of September, according to the governor’s office.
“Tim has served my administrations for more than a decade,” Kemp said in a statement. “I am grateful for his service and hard work, and I wish him all the best in his future endeavors.”
Replacing him on an interim basis will be Caylee Noggle, currently the state’s chief management officer who previously held top posts in the Georgia Student Finance Commission and the state Office of Planning and Budget.
Noggle will be the first woman to serve as a governor’s chief of staff in Georgia.
“I am honored and humbled by the responsibility of leading Governor Kemp’s administration through this transition,” Noggle said. “I look forward to serving Governor Kemp and the State of Georgia in this role.”
Fleming, whose family has a long history of politics in Georgia, first worked with Kemp on his winning bid for a Georgia Senate seat in 2002. He then managed Kemp’s campaign for secretary of state in 2010 and served several roles in that office following Kemp’s win.
In 2018, Fleming managed Kemp’s underdog campaign for governor that saw the long-shot candidate prevail in the Republican primary and defeat Democratic nominee Stacey Abrams by a narrow margin.
The governor’s office did not say where Fleming is headed next. His departure comes as Kemp gears up to defend his record against a likely challenge from Abrams in the 2022 gubernatorial election.
“I truly appreciate the opportunities that Governor Kemp and his family have provided me over the years,” Fleming said. “I look forward to beginning this new and exciting journey in the private sector.”
Gov. Brian Kemp speaks with reporters about Georgia’s economic growth on Sept. 1, 2020. (Photo by Beau Evans)
The well-known pizza chain Papa John’s has picked metro Atlanta for the site of its new international headquarters to open in 2021, Gov. Brian Kemp’s office announced Thursday.
The opening is poised to generate 200 jobs and comes as the popular pizza chain has seen sales growth during the COVID-19 pandemic as people rely more on food deliveries than in-person restaurant dining.
Papa John’s current headquarters is in Louisville, Ky., where most of the company’s corporate employees will continue to work. The company said it is exploring locations in the Atlanta area for the new headquarters and expects to open in summer 2021.
The pizza chain joins other major companies headquartered in the Atlanta area including The Coca-Cola Co., The Home Depot Inc. and Chick-fil-A. The bustling Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport is also a boon for locally headquartered businesses.
“It’s a pleasure to welcome Papa John’s to the strong list of internationally known U.S. companies that have chosen the Peach State for their global headquarters,” Kemp said in a statement. “As the Top State for Business for seven consecutive years, these leading businesses know that Georgia has what they need to continue to thrive and expand.”
While coronavirus-prompted closures have hammered local service industries since March, Georgia still managed to drum up more than $7.4 billion in new investments stemming from around 350 development projects since July of 2019, Kemp noted earlier this month.
The new headquarters will bring to Atlanta many of Papa John’s key corporate tasks including designing menus, marketing, e-commerce and development jobs. The company has around 5,300 locations across the world, plus 2,500 employees already in Georgia.
“Papa John’s already has a major corporate presence in Georgia and metro Atlanta, and we know the many strengths of the region,” said Papa John’s president and CEO Rob Lynch. “So, we’re especially excited to be expanding here, as part of our long-term growth plans.”
This story has been update to clarify that Papa John’s is opening an additional headquarters in metro Atlanta, not moving its headquarters from Louisville entirely.
