A Fairfield County employee was arrested and fired last week after County administrators determined he had used a County credit card to purchase approximately $9,000 in gas for use in personal vehicles.
Gregory Dwayne Watkins, 51, of Flora Circle in Winnsboro was arrested Oct. 10 and is being held on a $30,000 bond at the Fairfield County Detention Center, charged with embezzlement and transaction card fraud. Deputy County Administrator Davis Anderson said the County will be seeking full restitution when the case comes to trial.
Watkins had been with the County for eight months, Anderson said, employed as a day laborer for the Public Works Department. Anderson said Watkins had apparently obtained the PIN number for the County gas card by observing fellow employees entering the number into gas station pumps while filling up Public Works trucks. Watkins then allegedly began taking the cards from the trucks at the end of work days, using them for his own means, and returning the cards the following day. Since the second week of August, Watkins had allegedly used the County card to pump more than 2,500 gallons of gas.
Anderson said department heads noticed the abnormal card activity during a recent routine review of the credit card bills, prompting Fairfield County Sheriff’s investigators to pull security camera footage from local gas stations, which showed Watkins using the card.
