If you thought $$$-mgmt at Sandhills CC was bad, get a load of Lenoir County, NC.

We’ve written extensively about the really bad and horrible state audit of Sandhills Community College.  We’re talking about a $6.2 million screwup and an audit report scolding the college for not having anyone in place competent with basic accounting procedures. (Oh, and let’s not forget a tax lien from the Internal Revenue Service.)

The “fallout” from that?  A bunch of gaslighting by college sources that included: (1) blaming former president John Dempsey, (2) a three-year contract extension for the college president who oversaw the debacle, and (3) the reappointment of the board of trustees chairman who missed it all.

If this happened in the private sector, there would have been a lot of tears and job loss.  However, in the public sector, it’s a whole lot of *Move on, nothing to see here.*

I thought we’d seen it all. But then Lenoir County, North Carolina comes along:

Berry Building Group, a Greenville-based contractor, has filed a lawsuit against Lenoir County and several county officials, claiming the county owes them more than $1.3 million following a fraudulent email scam that redirected payments. The lawsuit was filed on July 3, 2025, with the complaint document file-stamped July 17, 2025.

According to a press release Friday afternoon, the Lenoir County Sheriff’s Office is actively investigating a fraud involving the Lenoir County Government. This is being done with the assistance of the Federal Bureau of Investigation locally and nationwide.

Lenoir County’s press release stated, “This is all we can report on at this time. This is a very active investigation.”

The dispute centers on a multi-million dollar contract for renovations to the Lenoir County Administrative Building located at 101 North Queen Street in Kinston. Berry Building Group entered into an agreement with the county on or about March 15, 2023, for these construction services. The initial contract amount was $3,575,000.00.

According to the lawsuit, progress payments were to be submitted by Berry Building Group to Dunn & Dalton Architects, P.A., for review, and then forwarded to Lenoir County for payment. While the first Application for Payment was reportedly paid without issue, the lawsuit alleges that the second, third, and fourth Applications for Payment, totaling $1,340,786.26, were not paid by the county. Additionally, $38,665.18 is claimed for retainage from Applications for Payment 1 through 12.

The core of the allegation is that in September 2023, county officials allegedly received a revised vendor packet via email from a fraudster posing as an employee of Berry Building Group.The lawsuit claims that county employees adjusted their payment processing to match the fraudulent email’s details and sent three payments, amounting to $1,340,786.26, to fraudsters instead of the contractor.

The complaint suggests that clear and obvious red flags were present in the fraudulent email and ACH instructions, including altered phone numbers and suspicious syntax. Berry Building Group states that large sums of money were given via the pervasive nature of electronic transfer and ACH scams, and it was reasonably foreseeable that these actions would damage the plaintiff. […]

Okay.  County employees received an email – with revised contact info – seeking seven figures worth of taxpayer cash.  No one thought to do a little due diligence on this?  Verify the new contact info with the contractor?  (I thought the architect was supposed to be the middle-man in the payment process.) 

If someone contacted me seeking to collect on a seven figure debt, I’d be bending over backwards and doing cartwheels to ensure the right amount of money was getting to the right people.  Seven figures of someone else’s money will often make you do that. 

This might be a good opportunity to suggest that state auditor Dave Boliek step up his efforts to verify that government employees are being oh-so careful in managing the money we so dutifully send to Raleigh and Washington each April.

It might also be a great idea to see some local leaders step up and take measures to reassure their constituents that they take the management of taxpayer money quite seriously.