The State Bureau of Investigation has arrested a part-time police clerk in Graham for an alleged attempt to defraud his one-time employers at the city’s police department.
The SBI’s office in Greensboro formally charged Jeffrey Paul Benes on Friday with the felony-level offense of obtaining property under false pretense.
According to Graham’s police department, this charge stems from a months-long inquiry that began over the summer when the department’s top brass noticed a discrepancy in the police clerk’s actual and reported attendance.
“This was reported up the chain of command and also to city hall,” the police department recalled in a formal statement on Friday. “The police department launched an internal investigation. The city and [police department’s] command also reported this to the NC SBI, who conducted a separate but parallel criminal investigation.”
These parallel probes reportedly revealed that Benes had been “falsifying time sheets in violation of our departmental polices.” As a result, the police department fired 72-year-old white male, who resides at 1407 East Gilbreath Street in Graham. In the meantime, the SBI obtained an arrest warrant that accuses the former police clerk of “represent[ing] that he was working when he was not and receiving payment for those unworked hours.”
Benes has been placed under an unsecured bond of $10,000 since his arrest.
Benes has been a frequent speaker at planning board and city council meetings over the past year, often expressing his opposition to developments that he considers to be too dense for the neighborhoods in which they are proposed – including one near his home on East Gilbreath Street – and in favor of keeping the Sesquicentennial Park, which was formerly located on the northwest corner of Court Square; the city council has now determined to sell that property via an online auction.
