{"id":1024298,"date":"2026-08-26T01:35:18","date_gmt":"2026-08-26T01:35:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/1024298\/"},"modified":"2026-08-26T01:35:18","modified_gmt":"2026-08-26T01:35:18","slug":"dallas-ig-uncovers-1-million-in-waste-fraud-and-improper-payments","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/1024298\/","title":{"rendered":"Dallas IG uncovers $1 million in waste, fraud and improper payments"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Dallas\u2019 top watchdog has uncovered at least $1 million in losses and overpayments in city money, including the salary of an employee <a href=\"https:\/\/www.dallasnews.com\/news\/politics\/article\/dallas-investigating-two-officials-employed-austin-22197579.php\" data-link=\"native\" class=\"\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">also working for Austin<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Dallas paid a vendor $227,000 more than was owed and paid $18,000 on a fraudulent invoice related to nonprofit spending, the city\u2019s\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.dallasnews.com\/news\/politics\/2026\/02\/11\/dallas-city-council-hires-search-firm-to-look-for-inspector-general-candidates\/\" data-link=\"native\" class=\"\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">inspector general<\/a> found.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>The office of inspector general, which has been investigating potential cases of financial waste and fraud since January this year, is also reviewing additional cases in which the city may have overspent $1.7 million.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Dallas City Hall has been at the center of <a href=\"https:\/\/www.dallasnews.com\/news\/politics\/2019\/04\/05\/roll-call-of-infamy-dallas-city-hall-corruption-scandals-including-dwaine-caraway\/\" data-link=\"native\" class=\"\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">waste and corruption scandals <\/a>involving city officials who took bribes to advance housing deals. Former council members have also been charged with embezzling funds and fraud.<\/p>\n<p>It prompted city leaders to establish the inspector general office in 2022, and voters gave the office more independence two years later.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Officials identified \u201csignificant financial issues involving vendor billing, payroll, outside employment, overtime, and use of City resources,\u201d said Baron\u00a0Eliason, the interim inspector general,\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/cityofdallas.legistar1.com\/cityofdallas\/attachments\/bac89739-8c3c-4116-a521-ebe9ee175c09.pdf\" data-link=\"native\" class=\"\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">in a memo<\/a> ahead of Thursday\u2019s ad hoc committee on general investigating and ethics meeting.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>The office\u2019s report showed four employees who were dually employed cost the city $692,000 \u2014 the largest loss identified.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>That included two IT officials who were under scrutiny earlier this year. Dallas officials told <a href=\"https:\/\/www.dallasnews.com\/news\/community-news\/news\/politics\/article\/dallas-investigating-two-officials-employed-austin-22197579.php\" data-link=\"native\" class=\"\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">The Dallas Morning News<\/a> they were investigating two employees who were working for the city of Austin during Dallas work hours. They had received information through the whistleblower tip line in November last year and notified Austin officials.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.statesman.com\/news\/local\/article\/austin-it-dallas-official-job-audit-22392876.php\" data-link=\"native\" class=\"\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">The Austin American-Statesman<\/a> reported the two cities investigated the issue in tandem. They compared notes, time and findings to reveal that IT official Hawre Sulaiman was attending meetings, taking calls and sending emails for both cities.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Dallas\u2019 top watchdog has uncovered at least $1 million in losses and overpayments in city money, including the&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":903429,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[5135],"tags":[5229,1596,358,3187,67,586,132,5230,68,2969],"class_list":["post-1024298","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-dallas","tag-america","tag-dallas","tag-texas","tag-tx","tag-united-states","tag-united-states-of-america","tag-unitedstates","tag-unitedstatesofamerica","tag-us","tag-usa"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1024298","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1024298"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1024298\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/903429"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1024298"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1024298"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1024298"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}