Name: Nine arrests made in 'ghost' employee scheme in Lee County
Uploaded: 2020-03-09T17:22:31.000Z
Duration: 2 min 27 s
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I'm Shari Armstrong in for a Patrick Nolan important story to tell you about tonight.

That's how much the Lee County Port Authority says they were scammed out of after a janitorial contracting scheme.

And now nine people are facing charges in connection to this crime.

Fox for Sandra Rodriguez joins us from Southwest Florida International Airport to tell us how they orchestrated this scheme.

Officials say the suspects were part of a scheme involving fake employees of Triangle Service is a janitorial company contract ID by the Lee County Port Authority.

Today, the Florida Department of Law Enforcement held a press conference to explain how that scheme worked.

Nine suspects arrested, charged with racketeering, organized fraud, conspiracy, theft and money laundering, all connected to a scheme that stole over $700,000 from the Lee County Port Authority.

The Port Authority is the victim in this case that paid for janitorial service is our local airports.

Service is that were never received and not even needed, officials say.

Thomas Brandon was the mastermind of this scheme.

He was a Triangle service's site manager at the Lee County Port Authority.

These were real people who got paid for janitorial service is that were never performed when payday would come.

The ghost employees who were never actually employable Triangle Service's would get paychecks directly deposited into their personal bank accounts and then give Brandon a portion.

Officials say Brandon worked hard to conceal the scheme when an investigation began in 2018 and it took measures to also conceal the illegal activity by creating documents to reflect termination of employment of all the ghost employees.

He also ordered the destruction of all on site timecards ahead of an audit performed by the Lee County Clerk of Courts Office of Inspector General.

The Lee County Port Authority says they still have a contract with Triangle Service's but are evaluating it.

Triangle is paid approximately $6 million a year for their service is officials say this investigation is still active, and they're still one suspect at large.

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Nine arrests made in 'ghost' employee scheme in Lee County

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fraud

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