Metro Atlanta city employee accused of stealing $1.5 million from city, faces 99 charges

Officials said the employee had worked for the City of Gainesville for 14 years.

Metro Atlanta city employee accused of stealing $1.5 million from city, faces 99 charges Former Gainesville employee Carl "Tim" Tench was accused of stealing $1.5 million from the city while working in the water department as a superintendent.

By Sam Sachs

GAINESVILLE, Ga. — A longtime metro Atlanta city employee is accused of stealing $1.5 million from the local government.

Carl Timothy Tench, 66, a former City of Gainesville Department of Water Resources superintendent, was taken into custody on Friday, the city said.

Officials said Tench, an employee of the city for 14 years, was charged with 99 criminal counts across a variety of “felony crimes in connection with an elaborate scheme” to steal from the water department.

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City Manager Bryan Lackey said their investigation started after seeing irregular purchases during an audit.

“We discovered during an internal audit this spring irregularities connected to HVAC (heating, ventilation and air conditioning) purchases through the Department of Water Resources,” Lackey said in a statement. “We began an internal investigation through which we uncovered a pattern of bid-rigging and fraud using the City’s purchasing system.”

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The city said they immediately fired Tench and had the Gainesville Police Department investigate.

As a result of the investigation, Tench was accused of stealing hundreds of thousands of dollars “incrementally over several years by rigging bids” for HVAC units he bought on behalf of the city.

“After securing low bids under a different identity and procuring checks for the HVAC units by submitting legitimate, but inflated purchase orders through the City’s municipal accounting software, Tench would use a fraction of the checks to purchase the HVAC units, then pocket the difference,” Gainesville officials said.

Now he faces 99 felony charges, though the city said more could be coming.

As of Monday, Tench faces:

  • 33 counts of bid-rigging
  • 33 counts of forgery, 1st degree
  • 33 counts of filing false documents

The former Water Department Maintenance Superintendent was released from the Hall County Jail on July 25 on bond.

After the audit, conducted by a third-party as a yearly undertaking, city officials said secondary audits of all departments found no evidence of other fraud or operation misconduct.

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