Sadoff: Audit results show Lober spending was 'wasteful, not for a legitimate public use'

Prosecutors said Monday they weren't pressing charges against former County Commissioner Bryan Lober over allegations he misspent taxpayer dollars, noting that the statute of limitations had expired.

The same day, Brevard County Clerk of the Court and Comptroller Rachel Sadoff, who acts as the county auditor, released a report calling Lober's spending while in office "indiscriminate, wasteful, and not for a legitimate public use."

Among Lober's more puzzling purchases, the report noted, was the purchase of high-end computer equipment more suited to cryptocurrency mining or high-end video editing than to running a government office.

Other highlights from the report:

• Lober used some of the items purchased with county funds exclusively for personal use. That included a pair of $300 satellite communication devices the FDLE said Lober used to send text messages while on a family vacation.
• He appeared to use some of the purchases, including a $200 video green screen and at least some of $630 worth of postage stamps bought with taxpayer money, to promote his re-election campaign.
• Lober's spending in office was more than twice that of any other commission office.

Prosecutors were prepared to charge Lober with fraudulently claiming a tax exemption, a third-degree felony, after an investigation by the Florida Department of Law Enforcement found that Lober used the county's tax exemption certificate to avoid sales tax on $1,717 worth of supplies paid for out of his re-election campaign.

However, the statute of limitations ran out only seven weeks before FDLE delivered its findings, State Attorney Phil Archer's office said in a release. Other charges were declined based on insufficient evidence, the release from state prosecutors said.

Lober did not respond to calls or text messages seeking comment for this story. Lia Allawas, a longtime friend and fellow attorney, told FLORIDA TODAY engagement editor John Torres on Lober's behalf that he felt "absolutely vindicated" by the state attorney's decision.

“I've known Brian for almost 15 years now, and I knew that he would never intentionally do anything wrong, ever. I used to work at the State Attorney's Office, and we were adversaries in court, and he never even came close to doing anything that was inappropriate. He’s happy that it's finally over," Allawas said.

Anonymous tip sparks audit

Sadoff began the audit in February 2022 at the request of the Commission, after an anonymous memo sent to commissioners outlined up to $40,000 in questionable expenditures by Lober's office during the COVID-19 pandemic.

The purchases, which included tens of thousands of dollars of office equipment and technology, including cameras and computer parts and accessories, were made largely on Lober's county-issued purchasing card and funded with taxpayer dollars, in part through federal pandemic relief grants. Lober resigned amid the controversy in April 2022, citing the death of a family member, but denied any wrongdoing.

About $9,000 worth of items that Lober purchased still remain unaccounted for, Sadoff said in the release, echoing the results of the FDLE investigation. The rest of the items, totaling about $33,000, had been accounted for or returned to the county, including many items that were donated to the county's IT department.

Sadoff said in the release her office had been monitoring spending by Lober's office "for some time due to some of the unusual purchases made by this district and the dollar amounts being just below or at the cap threshold of the purchasing card for a single transaction."

"The clerk’s office believes that District 2’s use of the county purchasing card, specifically by former Commissioner Bryan Lober, was often indiscriminate, wasteful, and not for a legitimate public use," Sadoff wrote.

Sadoff's team found no similar spending issues and only minor deficiencies in other county commission offices, which included those of former Commissioners Kristine Zonka and Curt Smith, going back for the five-year span of the audit period.

Audit: Lober used items bought with taxpayer funds for personal or campaign use

In a 214-page summary report of results, Sadoff described a series of policy violations and other findings that indicated Lober used items bought with taxpayer funds exclusively for his personal use or his re-election campaign.

Among them, auditors found Lober had purchased several electronic storage and communication devices with county funds that were protected by a password known only by Lober or accessible only by subpoena through a private company, creating public record concerns. One of the devices, a cloud network storage device, and its contents remain inaccessible, according to the report.

At least one of two "Bivy Stick" communication devices purchased by Lober — ostensibly to communicate with county emergency operations during hurricanes, according to the FDLE report — were used to send personal in-flight text messages while Lober was on vacation with his wife in August 2021.

The devices, similar to satellite phones, cost $300 each and required a $50 monthly subscription fee, which was paid only in August and September 2021, according to the audit report. The devices were never used to contact the county's emergency operations director and none of the communications stored in the devices had an identifiable business purpose, FDLE said in its report.

Auditors found Lober used the purchasing card assigned to his chief of staff to make transactions in violation of county policy, at times without his staffer's knowledge. Among the purchases was about $630 in stamps, for which auditors were unable to discern a public purpose after the chief of staff told them the office rarely mailed enough documents to warrant the purchase.

They noted Lober later sent out election petition cards to constituents in support of his re-election campaign, which included stamped return envelopes

At one point, Lober used county funds to pay for continuing educations classes required by the Florida Bar, the audit report said. Lober, an attorney, continued to run his private law practice during his County Commission tenure. He did not reimburse the funds for the classes, taken two years prior, until after the audit had begun, according to the report.

In another case, Lober used a green screen purchased with county funds to take pictures at his home with Brevard Sheriff Wayne Ivey for Lober's campaign, the report said.

Many purchases remain unexplained

Auditors remained baffled over the majority of the purchases. Many of the items were premium, high-grade computer components that IT staff, including the county's IT director, told the clerk's office were far beyond what was necessary for the scope and responsibilities of a commission office.

Some of the items, including processors, storage drives and graphics cards, were similar to those used for intensive video editing or even bitcoin mining, they told auditors — a process by which users can use high-powered computer processing to earn cryptocurrency worth tens of thousands of dollars.

One of the computers turned over to IT, assigned to Lober's receptionist, was more powerful than the one used by the IT engineer interviewed by Sadoff's office, according to the report.

"He believed barring some of the county's servers, this was likely the most powerful computer in the county," auditors wrote in the report.

Lack of cooperation raises concerns

Auditors noted Lober "did not fully cooperate" with the review, refusing to submit to an interview and failing to respond to their requests following his resignation. The clerk's office declined to allow him to answer written questions because the other commissioners were not given the same opportunity, the report said.

Lober asked to answer questions in writing after he said a member of the audit team misquoted him in an email.

Other facts uncovered during the audit raised further concerns. Some of the transactions were made using personal email accounts Lober had apparently created specifically for that purpose, mingling public and private purchases and in effect "shielding public information for these purchases from being accessible by the public," the report said.

During a February 2022 visit to his Merritt Island office, Lober appeared to mislead auditors when he failed to inform them that he had more items bought with county funds in his vehicle.

While they noted Lober and his wife unloading items from his car as they arrived at the office, surveillance video showed Lober's wife bringing additional boxes from the car and putting them in an "unknown location" within the building while auditors were preoccupied onsite, according to the report.

Stills from a surveillance camera outside the building appeared to show Lober's wife driving off the property with a large item in the vehicle matching the shape and color of a $750 office chair that had previously gone missing — a public symbol of the case that remains unaccounted for. (FDLE investigators noted in a case report that Lober eventually replaced the chair with his own money.)

Further items were found in a neighboring conference room belonging to the Merritt Island Redevelopment Agency, despite Lober's initial denial that the room contained any items relevant to the audit, the report said.

Only minor deficiencies in other commission offices

Lober's use of the purchasing card while in office far outstripped the other commission offices, at about $45,500 compared to between $3,000 (District 1 Commissioner Rita Pritchett) and about $14,000 (former District 5 Commissioner Kristine Zonka) during the audit timeframe, according to the report. The audit period ran from November 2016 to February 2022.

District 3 Commissioner John Tobia's office spent about $10,000, while that of former District 4 Commissioner Curt Smith spent about $12,000.

Minor deficiencies were discovered in each of the other four commission offices. A staffer in Pritchett's office bought and quickly canceled a personal Amazon Prime account costing about $12.99. Staff members in Tobia and Smith's offices used cards to buy items like bottled water and coffee, against policy requiring those purchases to be through county procurement with approval by the county manager.

Smith also had some travel expenses for which he failed to get written approval, and violated county policy when he allowed a staff member to use his card for office purchases, according to the audit report.

As a result of the audit, Sadoff made more than a dozen recommendations to the county commission, including:

• Audits should be completed when a commissioner leaves office and again when a new commissioner enters office to ensure all county property remains accounted for.
• Reports of transactions should include the specific reason an item was purchased, where it will be located and its intended use.
• Monthly transaction reports for commission offices should be placed on commission meeting agendas and directly addressed by commissioners in the sunshine.
• The county should provide training on purchasing cards to all incoming commissioners and their staff. Currently there is no such training in place.

Sadoff also recommended the commission consider civil action against Lober to recoup the $9,000 value of the missing items.

Eric Rogers is a watchdog reporter for FLORIDA TODAY. Contact Rogers at 321-242-3717 or esrogers@floridatoday.com.

This article originally appeared on Florida Today: Sadoff: Audit results show Lober spending was 'wasteful, not for a legitimate public use'