Auditor Sand uncovers $430,000 fraud scheme in Iowa Workforce Development funded program

Embezzled federal funds paid a family member’s cell phone bills and non-existent daycare services. Auditor Rob Sand says the state needs to prioritize oversight in light of investigation.

A special investigation by Iowa State Auditor Rob Sand found evidence of $426,000 in embezzled federal funds by an agency overseen by Iowa Workforce Development. The case represents the fifth-largest financial misappropriations uncovered during Sand’s tenure as State Auditor. 

Jodi Spargur-Tate was the director of Children and Families of Iowa, a family service organization that helps support youth, adults and displaced workers. CFI receives funds from the US Department of Labor that are administered by Iowa Workforce Development and passed through to Central Iowa Workforce Development Board, which contracted CFI.

According to the report, Spargur-Tate was on vacation when a fill-in discovered reimbursement expenses for automotive work for Spargur-Tate, despite her not having a car. The fill-in discovered other unauthorized reimbursements, evidence that the employee deferred to Iowa Workforce Development, which eventually brought in the Auditor. 

Over the course of seven years, Spargur-Tate reimbursed herself with over $300,000 and paid rent, utility and cell phone bills for family members, racking up $25,000 in costs. There was also $78,000 in payments made for daycare services that were never rendered. 

“The bottom line is there’s never any excuse for not making sure that there is enough oversight,” Sand said in a Thursday press conference. “We have to be doing this kind of subrecipient monitoring. And if we’re not, this is the kind of thing that results when people don’t have a sense of oversight for how the money is getting spent.”

In the Auditor’s reviews of IWD over the past six years, he has highlighted the need for more oversight over subrecipients of federal funds like Children and Families of Iowa. And now embezzlement has been discovered and is being referred to the Iowa Attorney General’s Office as well as local county attorney for prosecution. 

Following Sand’s press conference, Iowa Workforce Development responded with a press release saying that it is “simply inaccurate to say that IWD took no action to improve its monitoring and oversight responsibilities.”

“IWD implemented enhanced sub-recipient monitoring beginning in January 2020. IWD received only one other additional comment about sub-recipient monitoring from the auditor prior to June 2022. The remaining four audit reports referenced by Auditor Sand were issued to IWD after June 2022, including three reports that were issued in late 2024, more than two years after the incident had already been reported,” the press release said.

“The point is this was an area that the auditor’s office warned wasn’t up to the legal standards and Iowa Workforce Development was aware of that,” Sand said.

[Editor’s note: This article’s headline was clarified to emphasize that IWD administers the funds that CFI’s director allegedly embezzled. IWD does not run CFI. Information from a IWD press release was also added.]