ATLANTA — A once-top state official is going to fight criminal charges that she fabricated her resume in order to get her job.
Donna Alexander was hired in fall 2012 as a human resources director at a salary of $92,000.
Alexander got the job and started work before her background check was completed.
Now the state Attorney General’s Office is prosecuting Alexander on seven counts of making false statements about her education and work background on her resume.
“We hired her contingent on a background check. It was certainly a perfect storm,” said Kate Pfirman, the chief financial officer of the state Department of Public Health. “Almost as soon as it got underway, red flags popped up,”
For example, Alexander gave an address deep inside a large Newton County subdivision. When Channel 2 investigative reporter Richard Belcher went to the location to check it out, there was no house. Neighbors said there was never a house on that lot.
Alexander disappeared for nearly two years after the state fired her.
She was arrested after coming off a cruise ship in Miami in late June. She was brought back to Georgia and booked into the Fulton County Jail in mid-July.
A judge released her days later on a signature bond, even though the charges against Alexander include failure to appear in court. The Attorney General’s Office said the judge imposed a condition that Alexander is not allowed to leave the country.
The Attorney General’s Office initially expected that Alexander would plead guilty to at least one of the charges, but she now says the will go to trial.