As the city of Columbus was struggling financially, its Chief Financial Officer Milton Rawle Jr. was allegedly embezzling hundreds of thousands of dollars — the largest municipal embezzlement case in the state auditor’s records.
State Auditor Shad White announced Tuesday that agents arrested Rawle, 49, on the Coast on Monday.
Rawle is accused of stealing nearly $290,000 from the city. White said the impact of such amounts missing on a city with a $33 million budget is profound.
“Mr. Rawle stole a great deal from the taxpayers of Columbus,” White said. “… Now it’s time for prosecutors to send him to prison and get the money back.”
Rawle was being held in the Lowndes County Jail on Tuesday morning and awaiting an initial court appearance, White said. Rawle faces up to 20 years in prison and $25,000 in fines if convicted. White issued a repayment demand for Rawle of nearly $355,000, which includes interest and investigative costs.
White and Columbus Mayor Robert Smith Sr. on Tuesday said that Wanda Holley, a certified public accountant performing a routine audit of the city, discovered the issue and notified city leaders, who contacted White’s office.
White said his office is legally prohibited from auditing Mississippi cities, so he relies on tips from private audit firms and government employee whistleblowers. He said suspected fraud can be reported to his office by “clicking the red button” at www.osa.ms.gov or via telephone during business hours at 1-(800)-321-1275.
Republish this article
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
- Look for the "Republish This Story" button underneath each story. To republish online, simply click the button, copy the html code and paste into your Content Management System (CMS).
- Editorial cartoons and photo essays are not included under the Creative Commons license and therefore do not have the "Republish This Story" button option. To learn more about our cartoon syndication services, click here.
- You can’t edit our stories, except to reflect relative changes in time, location and editorial style.
- You can’t sell or syndicate our stories.
- Any web site our stories appear on must include a contact for your organization.
- If you share our stories on social media, please tag us in your posts using @MSTODAYnews on Facebook and @MSTODAYnews on Twitter.
- You have to credit Mississippi Today. We prefer “Author Name, Mississippi Today” in the byline. If you’re not able to add the byline, please include a line at the top of the story that reads: “This story was originally published by Mississippi Today” and include our website, mississippitoday.org.
- You can’t edit our stories, except to reflect relative changes in time, location and editorial style.
- You cannot republish our editorial cartoons, photographs, illustrations or graphics without specific permission (contact our managing editor Kayleigh Skinner for more information). To learn more about our cartoon syndication services, click here.
- Our stories may appear on pages with ads, but not ads specifically sold against our stories.
- You can’t sell or syndicate our stories.
- You can only publish select stories individually — not as a collection.
- Any web site our stories appear on must include a contact for your organization.
- If you share our stories on social media, please tag us in your posts using @MSTODAYnews on Facebook and @MSTODAYnews on Twitter.