Fayette Town employee arrested on misuse of public funds charges

Fayette Town employee arrested on misuse of public funds charges

A former Fayette Town employee has been arrested in connection with the misuse of public funds dating back to 2009.  Tracy Kay Mellor was booked into the Sanpete County Jail on Thursday following an investigation initiated when Mellor quit her job as town clerk in January following a confrontation with new Mayor Brenda Liefson over missing checks.  After the confrontation, Liefson began reviewing the town’s bank statements and discovered many checks written to R&T’s, a business owned by Mellor and her husband, dating back to 2009.  An investigation conducted by the Sanpete County Sheriff’s Office and the Utah State Auditor’s Office discovered altered bank statements where checks made out to R&T’s had been altered to show numerous vendor’s names used by Fayette Town in what appears to be an obvious deception towards the Town Council.  The total amount transferred from the town’s account to Mellor’s account appears to be $229,000.  Because of the sheer volume of the alleged fraud, 37 transactions dating from 2014 and 2015 were submitted for potential criminal charges.  Mellor has been charged with nine counts of misuse of public money, a third-degree felony.