Jerry Dyer, you’re Fresno’s mayor, not police chief. So be up front about invoice scam
During his makeover from Fresno’s police chief to its mayor, Jerry Dyer stopped wearing his uniform to press conferences and started wearing tailored suits.
Sartorial tastes aside, Dyer at times sounded more like a cop than an elected official Thursday while trying to explain how the city got duped for $613,737 in an online phishing scam and kept the matter under wraps for two years.
Compelled to transparency by the reporting of The Bee’s Brianna Calix, Dyer gave Fresno taxpayers a detailed account of what transpired. He provided dates, named names and admitted the missing money, sent to bank accounts listed on two fake invoices identical to those issued by a construction company building the southeast Fresno police station, was reallocated without anyone (outside a select few) being any the wiser.
Dyer also gave several reassurances that he and his administration can, in fact, be trusted. The scam, which occurred in 2020 during the final year of Mayor Lee Brand’s tenure, was kept from public view because it was part of a larger criminal enterprise under investigation by the FBI.
The FBI made the request for secrecy, Dyer said, “for fear (public disclosure) would hinder their investigation because they had good leads at that time. And it could also impact the ability to be able to recover any of the funds that were taken not only from the city of Fresno, but also other agencies that had been victimized.”
More than a year has passed since the FBI took over the case from the Fresno Police Department in November 2020. During those 15 months, according to Calix’s original story, the city has recovered less than $2,000 of the stolen sum.
Unless we’re dealing with a group of stupid criminals — and by appearances we’re not — the rest of that $613,737 is either long gone or parked safely offshore.
Dyer knows this, of course. But that didn’t prevent him from using its highly unlikely recovery as a cudgel to bemoan the internal leak that helped make the matter public.
Which is when the mayor of California’s fifth-largest city stopped sounding like an elected leader and began sounding like an individual who spent the four previous decades in law enforcement.
Recalling a conversation the previous day with an FBI agent from an “East Coast” field office, Dyer said he felt “the need to apologize to him for this leak because that information was shared with us in confidence.” Dyer said he was “embarrassed” Fresno was the only city where the information got out. While being certain to leave a strong impression its untimely disclosure somehow compromised the FBI’s investigation.
The spin landed quite effectively, too. At least judging by some of the headlines generated by other Fresno media chasing Calix’s original story.
Mayor’s misplaced embarrassment
Dyer’s need to apologize is misplaced. If anything, it’s a surprise that a nugget of news this juicy stayed a secret as long as it did. That he expressed embarrassment over the leak, rather than embarrassment over the missing money, is equally telling.
Yes, an open FBI investigation involving multiple cities (some taken for even more dough than Fresno, apparently) is a legitimate reason for keeping lips sealed at City Hall. The question is for how long. When does the public’s right to know outweigh the benefit of governmental secrecy?
Based on disclosures Dyer himself made during his 32-minute press conference, without any prompting, that particular tipping point has been crossed.
If Calix’s story compromised the FBI investigation by tipping off the crooks, which Dyer strongly implied, then why pass along further details for public consumption?
Not only did Dyer clarify the scam originated in the U.S. (not Africa as originally reported, spoiling a lot of jokes), but also that the FBI had identified potential suspects.
Dyer said he received the FBI agent’s permission to reveal those bits of information. But why do so if secrecy were so important to the case? Obviously, it’s not. Or at least not anymore.
I asked Dyer when he planned to tell us Fresno taxpayers were out all that dough. He replied: “In 45 to 60 days.” Which is the time Dyer estimated the FBI would need to make its case.
City’s fishy public records denial
That struck me as an awfully convenient answer. No one can be certain how long a federal investigation will drag on — or if it will be closed at all. And if the case had remained open and unsolved, would someone at City Hall ever fess up about the missing money? Feel free to harbor doubts.
The reason I say that has a lot to do with how the city processed Calix’s original public records request in December. Because her request contained the phrase “wire fraud” and those specific keywords did not appear in communications between Fresno City Councilmembers and Dyer’s administration, the city issued a denial claiming it could “not locate” pertinent records.
Which turned out to be a hunk of baloney. Even though the words “wire fraud” weren’t a match, City Attorney Doug Sloan (to whom the PRA was sent) knew exactly what Calix was asking for. According to an 18-page document authored by Sloan himself, city officials are obligated to assist those seeking to obtain public memos make “a focused and effective request that reasonably describes an identifiable record or records.”
None of that happened here. The city attorney’s office could have denied Calix’s request, citing the ongoing FBI investigation as an exemption to California’s Public Record Act. At least that would have been more honest. Instead, they pretended they didn’t know what she was talking about.
That’s the most troubling aspect of this mess. More so than the leak, the missing $613,737 or even Dyer temporarily losing sight of who he works for. Hint: It’s not the FBI.
