"Citizen activist" wants clarity in Macomb County Prosecutor's Forfeiture Fund spending

(WJBK) - Jared Manynard is fighting for what he calls transparency in how the Macomb County Prosecutor spends money from a Forfeiture Fund from drunken drivers and drug forfeitures

That's public information that's public dollars and we need to have public oversight in how that's spent,” citizen activist Jared Manynard said.

Maynard who calls himself a citizen activist and his attorney filed a lawsuit to get documents including receipts and canceled checks to see how the money is spent.  

Maynard says some of the money was spent correctly, but he questions how thousands of other dollars are spent from the fund. 

“I went through the roof; we have steady payments to an employee’s personal credit card of $20,000 a month for multiple months,” he said. 

There's $10,000 worth of furniture that’s sitting upstairs, we pay for water, there’s a fridge that was purchased from ABC Warehouse for the prosecutors and their break room,” Maynard said.  

Macomb County Prosecutor Eric Smith reacted to allegations saying Maynard is really a political opportunist and reacted to the wrongdoing in how the Forfeiture Fund is handled.

“Every year we have to file a report with the office of management and budget through the state we have filed that ever year as long as this account has been in effect and we never heard anything back from the state,” Smith said. 

Now Maynard is asking for the county commissioners to do an audit.  Macomb County Executive Mark Hackel is also asking for a forensic audit to be conducted.

Maynard hopes that all of the commissioners vote to approve the audit and that includes the prosecutor's brother who chairs the Board of Commissioners.

The commissioners' vote to consider an audit takes place next month.

The prosecutor says make no mistakes, he supports an audit also.

“We agreed to an audit six months ago so an audit to do these is great we've never had a problem with the audit, finance already has the last two years of records and they should've been going on this audit already so it may very well be going on now,” Smith said.