(Source: k2radio.com) Criminal investigations by state and federal law enforcement focus on a former Casper resident who allegedly funneled some $2 million in federal community development funds to her then-boyfriend’s construction company and took expensive trips to see him on taxpayers’ dime.
Court documents say Gayle Scarborough, also known as Gayle Brownlee, “may have breached a public trust and abused her position as a state official” by improperly awarding contracts, using federal grant money to pay for personally-motivated trips and taking kickbacks in exchange for “showing bias in the performance of [her] official duties.”
The Wyoming Division of Criminal Investigation’s fraud and theft case, which ran parallel to an ongoing federal investigation by U.S. Housing and Urban Development and the Federal Bureau of Investigation, is ongoing.
Scarborough was the Director of Federal Programs for the Wyoming Community Development Authority when a WCDA employee went to a member of the WDCA Board of Directors with a “whistleblower complaint” of criminal activity by Scarborough.
The board member later went to an investigator in the Office of the Inspector General with U.S. Housing and Urban Development in Denver, Colo., with documents reportedly indicating Scarborough “falsified state and federal document in regards to travel reimbursements, and removed WCDA-owned property for personal use.”
The authority, a state agency created in 1975, finances affordable housing by raising capital, in part through selling tax-exempt mortgage revenue bonds to investors. The Authority says it receives no state funding, but uses federal grant money in administering federal programs...