Warren County officials pointing fingers over missing money
After a visit to New York City, this writer did not see the danger
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The latest update on Warren County’s missing $3.3 million comes from the Warren County newsletter. That should come as no surprise, since former Post-Star reporter Don Lehman is behind that newsletter.
For me, that gives the newsletter credibility.
The newsletter reported that Warren County Sheriff Jim LaFarr addressed the supervisors about ongoing efforts to collect the missing funds. The newsletter said LaFarr described the theft as a “very basic act of fraud that was easily preventable.” He said it started with a phone call from a scammer requesting to change a vendor’s payment information.
Apparently, that was done.
Why it was done, who authorized it and how can it be prevented needs to be answered.
County Treasurer Christine Norton also addressed the board and defended her staff’s actions, but finally added, “There are definitely things we should have done better. I will take full accountability for it when the investigation is done.”
I wondered if she meant “responsibility,” because as treasurer she is already accountable.
The supervisors voted at the end of their organizational meeting to hire the Albany law firm of Bond, Schoeneck and King to perform an independent investigation. The New York State Comptroller’s Office is also being asked to investigate the matter.
It was good to hear some new information on the missing money since The Post-Star’s previous story.
There are still many unanswered questions from those involved.
The fraud occurred when an electronic payment of $2.1 million was made on Dec. 12, 2025 and another for $1.2 million was made on Dec. 22 to what the treasurer’s office believed was Peckham Industries.
LaFarr explained it to The Post-Star this way:
“Our Treasurer’s Office received a call from a person alleging that they were a representative of Peckham [Industries]. This person was calling to request the ability to establish an ACH, which is an Automated Clearing House payment vendor account with the county of Warren. There’s a process and a procedure in place for vendors to be set up to complete these automated payments. The request was submitted and the account was established. However, the account was established using fraudulent information.”
That means someone was had.
LaFarr described this as a very “basic act of fraud” of the sort many of us have received over the years.
But here is what is of concern: The Post-Star reported that LaFarr’s and treasurer Norton’s accounts of the events differed.
LaFarr said he received a call from Warren County’s Board of Supervisors chairman, Kevin Geraghty, about the fraud. No one in the treasurer’s office reached out to LaFarr about the fraud.
“Time with any one of these investigations is absolutely critical — minutes are essential with any type of an electronic banking transfer. Transactions can occur midday, late afternoon, and we want to get out in front of these things as quickly as we can,” LaFarr told The Post-Star.
Warren County Treasurer Christine Norton told the newspaper that was “not accurate.”
“The Treasurer’s Office found out about this fraud scheme on Dec. 23 and we immediately looked into it. We called Arrow Bank because we had to follow very specific protocol, and that very specific protocol was to reach out to the FBI, complete an IC3 (internet crime complaint), and to contact the New York State Police, so we were not advised to call the sheriff,” Norton told The Post-Star.
LaFarr countered that Warrensburg Supervisor Kevin Geraghty and Warren County Administrator Joh Taflan gave his office “full access to anything we need — agency computers, agency records, and all employee personnel.”
Norton said she had been cooperating with the Sheriff’s Office until Dec. 30.
That’s when Norton got a lawyer.
She told The Post-Star that in a Dec. 30 meeting, Geraghty and Taflan were “bullying” her and making her out to be a scapegoat.
“Due to certain events that happened on December 30, it became very evident that this was being targeted at the Treasurer’s Department. As a result of that, I obtained an attorney,” Norton told the newspaper.
LaFarr said he was waiting for Norton’s lawyer to schedule an interview with his office.
Norton also said Geraghty had received notice from Peckham Industries as early as July 2025 that bad actors might be impersonating the firm.
Geraghty told The Post-Star that was false.
LaFarr also said that “safeguards were not in place to make sure that our county was protected from potential fraud and liabilities.”
That made Warren County’s e-banking and wire transfers vulnerable.
The good news is that LaFarr said the second payment of $1.2 million was recovered.
Remembering Lynn
When I stopped by Warren-Hamilton Counties Community Action on Monday afternoon, there was a single rose in a small, simple vase with a note that said “Remember Lynn.”
I was told that 37 of you had already donated a gift in memory of Community Action’s late executive director, Lynn Ackershoek.
It’s a good start, but I hope many more of you will consider donating in Lynn’s memory. The need is great.
Another reader told me that Hannaford Supermarkets has a kiosk in each store from October through January with $5 and $10 coupons you can buy to support Community Action.
The $5 provides 50 meals and the $10 provided 100 meals. Consider doing that as well.
Safe in New York
It was just after 6 a.m. Monday morning when I descended into the 72nd Street subway station on New York’s Upper West Side.
New York City was just waking up.
There in the quiet of the car was a mix of people heading off to work, some looking at phones, others holding backpacks, others dozing.
Granted, this was the Upper West Side, but despite some reports from Washington, New York seemed safer than ever.
I arrived Saturday for a couple of shows in the city. I spent most of my time on the Upper West Side, took in a Seinfeld show at the Beacon Theater, the opera at the Met and visited the Museum of Natural History.
New York was quiet.
No National Guard troops.
No roving gangs that I saw
It may have been as quiet as I have ever seen the city.
Regional protests
As Will Doolittle reported in The Front Page on Sunday, hundreds turned out for the protests in Glens Falls on Saturday. It was one of many protests held around the region. Will reported there were more than 400 and said that was a conservative estimate
The Albany Times Union reported more than 1,000 demonstrators Saturday protesting the killing of a Minneapolis woman by ICE. The newspaper said the sidewalks down Wolf Road in Colonie were filled for about a half-mile.
There was also a caravan of 40 cars that circled around the area, honking horns in support of the protesters.
The T-U also reported there was one large sign on Wolf Road that read, “Melt ICE.”
There were also a few hundred people protesting in downtown Saratoga and more in Chestertown.
Ice shootings
If you were wondering how many other shootings ICE agents have been involved in since the latest crackdown on immigration, the New York Times reported that Renee Good’s death in Minneapolis was the ninth.
The Times found that one other person, Silverio Villegas-Gonzalez, was fatally shot by an ICE agent in September. That fatal shooting was also justified as self-defense because the victim “weaponized” his car.
Opera out in D.C.
Last week, the Washington National Opera became the latest act to depart the Kennedy Center.
While the company had been performing at the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C. since 1971, it decided on Friday it was leaving.
The opera company is seeking to sever ties after facing economic backlash to President Trump’s involvement with the Kennedy Center.
The opera’s board approved a resolution Friday to “seek an amicable early termination of its affiliation agreement with the Kennedy Center and resume operations as a fully independent nonprofit entity.”
The opera company has been looking at new sites, but has not yet signed a lease.
Credit cards
The Biden administration enacted a regulation that capped credit card late fees at $8. When President Trump took over a year ago, he killed the regulation.
This past week, Trump called for a one-year cap to credit card interest rates at 10 percent. But he offered no details on how he would do that since that typically requires regulatory action from Congress.
Trump also tried to close the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, which monitors abuses by credit card companies.
Trump’s budget director, who took over as head of CFPB, has halted bank exams and ended dozens of lawsuits against financial companies accused of violating consumer protection laws while also trying to fire 90 percent of the agency’s staff.
He said recently he expected the agency to be eliminated in the coming months.
This does not sound like an administration friendly to consumers.
Ken Tingley spent more than four decades working in small community newspapers in upstate New York. Since retirement in 2020 he has written three books and is currently adapting his second book “The Last American Newspaper” into a play. He currently lives in Queensbury, N.Y.
“We are our choices.” - Jean-Paul Sartre
We keep choosing (electing) poorly.
It’s bad enough that Warren County failed to have adequate safeguards in place to protect it from fraud. What’s worse is that county executives seemed to have formed a circular firing squad in their efforts to address the problem. This does not give residents much confidence in county management.