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Documents detail Lee County lawyer probe

Susan McCord

LEESBURG — It would cost Ramon Fajardo $1.3 million to defend Stacy Bernard Sims, the Norman Park man accused of murdering six migrant workers in September 2005.

The Leesburg lawyer was appointed to defend Sims, one of several defendants facing the death penalty in Tift County. Fajardo’s estimate was “excessively high” compared to estimates offered by other contract attorneys in death penalty cases, according to affidavits recently filed in Lee County Superior Court.

Fajardo withdrew from the Sims case and several others in January, saying the Georgia Public Defender Standards Council hadn’t paid him for work in six months.

A battery of allegations made in March by the public defender council that Fajardo billed for work he hadn’t done or overbilled for services would provide the meat of several search warrants served on May 8 at Fajardo’s Leesburg offices and Smithville area home.

Fajardo, who in March would withdraw his bid to run for district attorney of the Southwestern Judicial Circuit, declined to speak to reporters Tuesday night at his home.

The warrants, sworn out by a Georgia Bureau of Investigation theft and fraud investigator Special Agent Brian Queener, cited an interview of public defender council Director Mack Crawford. Queener said in the warrant that “Crawford advised it appeared that Fajardo was living off the amount of payments received from the council.”

A former employee informed the agent that Fajardo “had a target amount Fajardo wanted to bill each month,” the agent’s affidavit said. If his actual time worked didn’t meet the target, using legal software called “Amicus Attorney,” Fajardo “would inflate the billing prior to sending the bill in to the Public Defender Standards Council.”

Fajardo worked as a contract attorney for the state-funded council, which operates public defender offices in most Georgia counties.

Checking jail logs against visits with Sims for which Fajardo billed the council, the investigator noted “discrepancies.” Visits in December 2006 and January, February and May 2007 that Fajardo entered on his council time sheet were not reflected on the jail log at the Crisp County Jail, the affidavit said.

Also cited were concerns filed by two judges. Dougherty Circuit State Court Judge John F. Salter wrote in a letter that Fajardo’s billings in three Albany cases were “egregiously overreaching” and had been adjusted “in accordance with common sense,” the agent’s affidavit stated. Tifton Circuit Superior Court Judge Gary McCorvey “questioned” Fajardo’s billing, the documents state.

Fajardo also had been reprimanded for overcharging work done on federal cases by Middle District Chief Judge Hugh Lawson.

The search warrants recovered binders labeled “Stacey Sims” and “Rich, Shurrod,” at Fajardo’s horse farm, according to receipts filed with the court. Investigators also recovered more than 100 other individual case files from two adjoining offices on Walnut Street in Leesburg and seized several computers.

The volume of information being processed by the GBI’s financial audit unit and concerns about the privacy of information seized in the raid that may not be related to the investigation mean it may take months before any determination is made as to whether any crime has been committed, said Dougherty District Attorney Ken Hodges, appointed by Georgia Attorney General Thurbert Baker as a special prosecutor in the case.

A special master, J. Tom Morgan, was appointed Monday to ensure the GBI only examines information regarding Fajardo’s billing practices, Hodges said.

Once the investigation is complete, Hodges will determine whether to bring charges, he said.

Herald reporter J.D. Sumner also contributed to this report.

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