Arkansas Blog: State employee indicted

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State employee indicted

The other shoe finally dropped. John Harris, former director of the Arkansas Board of Architects, was indicted today on six federal mail fraud charges for seeking reimbursement for tens of thousands of dollars in fraudulent travel expenses. We've mentioned these reimbursements in earlier items arising from a state audit. A news release from acting U.S. Attorney Jane Duke said Harris obtained in excess of $43,000 from February 2003 to July 2005.

The state audit identified nearly $10,000 in expense payments to another office employee, but the U.S. attorney's news release made no mention of that. Harris quit the job in March and repaid more than $100,000. His assistant also repaid challenged reimbursements she'd made. Harris' lawyer said at the time his client had done nothing wrong, but wanted to "put it behind him."

Posted by Max Brantley on December 5, 2007 04:48 PM | Permalink

Comments

Maxie,

Thought you might want to see this.

Posted by: BlackBerry | December 5, 2007 06:02 PM

Welcome aboard Blackberry. Max-AT tracks the Huck several times a day.
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Harris' lawyer said at the time his client had done nothing wrong, but wanted to "put it behind him."

Well looks like he's a year or so late putting it behind him cause it's come back to bite him in the ass.

Posted by: eLwood | December 5, 2007 07:10 PM

Max, back when the Clinton LIbrary was being planned, there was a controversy about the licensing of the architects chosen for the project. Was this John Harris in charge of the architects licensing bureau back then?

Posted by: 70%er | December 6, 2007 09:03 AM

Hey, does John Harris have any spicey spicy emails we can read? Was he buggering some software selling women with a great behind? Cough up the contents of his hard drive and let's take a look! Oh wait.....Huckabee crushed his hard drive too? For the love of Mike......

Posted by: Deathbyinches | December 6, 2007 09:24 AM

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