The Eureka Springs Police Department has closed its investigation into allegations of computer trespassing regarding the City Advertising and Promotion Commission, with no evidence of a crime being committed, police chief Brian Young said by email Friday, Oct. 14.
Young was responding to questions about a letter from Adam Wilson, digital evidence supervisor at the Arkansas State Crime Laboratory.
In the letter, Wilson writes that he could find no indication that the Eureka Springs Police Department had submitted evidence to the crime lab in connection with its investigation. Wilson writes that he contacted the ESPD and was told by Young that the evidence had been submitted to a private lab and that “it was a civil matter.”
“I was referring to the Cities Civil case, because that is what it is now,” Young said in an email to the Lovely County Citizen in response to questions about Wilson’s letter. “The criminal case is now closed. The Municipal League had the evidence sent to a private lab in Oklahoma; I can’t remember the name of [sic] the top of my head, because we did not have the recourses available at the time to have it analyzed. No evidence of a crime was found in that, so any criminal case was closed. If they were able to find any evidence, then we would have then forwarded it to the State Crime Lab. I will have our report sent to you.”
Wilson had been contacted by Eureka Springs attorney Tim Parker, who represents a group of plaintiffs in an ongoing lawsuit against various city officials including Mayor Butch Berry and several current and former CAPC commissioners.
‘ACTIVE INVESTIGATION’
Young had declined multiple times to discuss details of the investigation, citing an exemption to theArkansas Freedom of Information Act for open and ongoing law enforcement investigations.
On June 10, Young responded by email to a request for information, writing: “At this time the case is still an active investigation and not available for FOIA. When the case is available we will notify you.”
Later in the same email conversation, after a reporter raises the possibility of filing a complaint with the Carroll County prosecuting attorney over Young’s refusal to release the information, Young writes: “(O)bviously if you feel the need, you can, but our investigation will remain active until the results of the evidence come back. Either way I will personally notify you when the report becomes available.”
‘POSSIBILITY OF MISCONDUCT’
The ESPD investigation apparently began in February 2021. During a CAPC meeting on Feb. 24, 2021, chairman Jeff Carter said that he had met with Young on Feb. 8, 2021, “to discuss the possibility of misconduct within the CAPC.”
Later at the same meeting where Carter announced he had met with the police chief, the commission held an executive session before voting 5-1 to fire Gina Rambo, a longtime CAPC employee who had served as interim director for several months before the commission removed that title earlier in February 2021.
During a deposition taken as part of the ongoing lawsuit, Eureka Springs City Council member Melissa Greene — who at the time was one of two council representatives on the CAPC — said that during the executive session, Carter presented the commission with an email from former CAPC director Lacey Ekberg. In the email from Ekberg to Carter dated April 30, 2020, Ekberg refers to sales leads from the CAPC website being directed to three local business people.
“I discovered these in December, and could trace back 3 years,” Ekberg’s email says. “No one took responsibility for doing it. So couldn’t get a reason why. … I’m sure this was a cooperative effort by several people. I just couldn’t nail any of them with it.”
Greene said in her deposition that Carter referred to Rambo in discussing the email from Ekberg.
“In the executive session, Jeff said something about Gina,” Greene said. “I got the impression that — I mean, I felt like I had been
“The criminal case is now closed. The Municipal League had the evidence sent to a private lab in Oklahoma … No evidence of a crime was found in that.”
Eureka Springs Police Chief Brian Young sucker-punched when I read that thing. I mean, it just — it was horrible that she was aware of it.”
Greene said she filed a report with the Eureka Springs Police Department after a conversation with Carter.
“I think that I talked to Jeff sometime before that meeting because he asked if I would be willing to file the report and I said sure,” Greene said in her deposition.
In a recorded conversation obtained by the Lovely County Citizen, Carter says Ekberg discovered that visitors to the CAPC website were being routed to certain businesses in Eureka Springs.
“What she did is she found irregularities in where money was going, and how business was being — potentially — I don’t want to accuse anyone, even though I know it’s true,” Carter said. “Some businesses were being favored over others, intentionally.”
Later in that recording, Carter again refers to leads being forwarded to individual businesses.
“Matter of fact, not only that, but our website was set up at one time where you clicked on something, it didn’t even go to our office, didn’t even come to Gina, bypassed Gina completely, went directly to private business owners. That’s pretty low. That’s pretty low. And when I asked Gina about it, she basically said: ‘Yeah, we knew it was going on.’ She manages the website.”
Carter says in the audio recording that Rambo allowed “Damon” to come into the CAPC office and access the commission’s computers — apparently referring to Damon Henke, a former CAPC commissioner who has denied being given access to the commission’s computers.
“What I was told is that she let Damon come in with his computer and set it up, is what I was told,” Carter says in the audio recording. “Damon came in physically [and] rerouted the email to go to certain business people and not through the office. That was happening. And Lacey Ekberg came in and said: ‘Gina, this is illegal.’And she cut it off.”
DETECTIVE INTERVIEWED RAMBO
Although Young has declined to answer questions regarding the investigation, he said in a May 25, 2021, email to attorney Amanda LaFever of theArkansas Municipal League that Rambo was interviewed by an ESPD detective.
“Rambo was interviewed by Detective Jackson,” Young writes. “He should be back in shortly and I will obtain the video from the interview and send it to you. the others were interviewed by phone and are attached. Rambo’s Miranda is attached as well in the report.”
A list of attachments to the email is redacted in the copy provided by LaFever in response to an open-records request. LaFever also declined to provide the attachments, citing the ongoing police investigation. LaFever represents the defendants in the ongoing lawsuit.
FORENSIC AUDIT
The Lovely County Citizen previously reported that technicians from Avansic eDiscovery + Digital Services collected a total of 39 devices from the CAPC office then located at 122 E. Van Buren, Suite 3, and from the Eureka SpringsAuditorium on Nov. 4, 2021, according to copies of email communications between Avansic representatives and LaFever.
Based in Tulsa, Avansic describes itself as “a leading provider of eDiscovery and digital forensics services to attorneys, litigation support teams, and business communities across the nation.”
On Nov. 11, 2021, Avansic project manager Brad Deavers emailed LaFever and Municipal League paralegal Jessica Pacheco to say that some of the devices collected by the company had been “factory reset” and contained no user- created data.
LAWSUIT UPDATE
Parker filed the lawsuit in Carroll County Circuit Court in March 2021. Plaintiffs in the suit are Rambo, former CAPC events coordinator Tracy Johnson, former finance director Rick Bright, former group sales coordinator Karen Pryor and former commissioner Greg Moon.
Defendants in the lawsuit are Berry; Carter; CAPC commissioner Patrick Burnett; former commissioners James DeVito and Carol Wright; city council members Greene and Harry Meyer, both of whom were CAPC commissioners at the time the suit was filed; Kim Stryker, Berry’s administrative assistant; Ekberg; the city; and an insurance company that provides a policy to the city.Asecond insurance company was originally named as a defendant but was later dismissed from the suit.
Carroll County Circuit Judge Scott Jackson last week ordered Wright to sign a release allowing the plaintiffs to request documents related to her work history. Jackson’s order stipulates that the admissibility of any documents received by the plaintiffs is “an issue reserved by the court for future determination,” and that any such documents referenced in future court filings will be sealed.
