A state audit earlier this month found a lack of evidence for claims of embezzlement by the city of Randleman’s former finance director. Even so, the state found Randleman is yet another city behind on state-mandated annual audits.
Randleman is a city of almost 4,600 residents as reported in the 2020 Census in Randolph County, operating under a mayor and a Board of Aldermen with five members.
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The North Carolina Office of the State Auditor, Dave Boliek, investigated the city’s finances after receiving several allegations of “improper governmental activities” involving the city’s former finance director, Elizabeth Sechriest. The district attorney for Randolph County also asked the state auditor to investigate after receiving similar allegations, the report said.
Allegations in Randleman
The most serious of the claims, embezzlement, was found to be unsubstantiated by the state auditor, the report said. Randy Brechbiel, communications director for the state auditor, said this was determined by “investigative analysis and interviews with city personnel.”
Allegations were also made that Randleman taxpayer dollars were being wasted by paying for both the former finance director’s salary and for the help of an outside accounting firm. The state auditor confirmed that the city hired an outside firm to help with services including bank reconciliation, creating and correcting journal entries and running trial balances between December 2022 and November 2025, the report said.
Ultimately, the city spent more than $154,000 on services from the firm within that time frame, some of those services within the former finance director’s scope of responsibilities, the report said. However, these services also overlapped with a period during which the city had employed an interim finance director until the city’s current finance director was hired, Brechbiel said.
It was also alleged that the city paid the former finance director roughly $59,000 to leave her position with the city of Randleman, the report said.
The state auditor concluded that the former finance director was paid that sum for wages, reimbursement of insurance and previously accrued vacation time, though the actual agreement process between the former finance director and the city wasn’t made public, the report said.
During a meeting in July 2025, the board entered a closed session to discuss a “personnel matter.” Once the session was reopened, board members disclosed that the city reached a “mutual separation” agreement with the former finance director and that she would be paid roughly $59,000 for the previously mentioned reasons, the report said.
CPP reached out to Hank Raper, the city manager for Randleman, to request a comment, but he did not respond prior to publication.
The former finance director was also accused of making fraudulent purchases with her city-issued P-card. To investigate these claims, the state auditor sampled one transaction per month between December 2024 and June 2025. They found that for each purchase, the former finance director submitted the proper purchase forms and gained approval from the city administrator, the report said.
As a result, the state auditor determined that conducting a full audit of the transactions would have been “duplicative and an inefficient use of state resources,” and that the allegations regarding the former finance director’s P-card use were unsubstantiated.
This finding was backed by city leaders, who also said there was no evidence she made fraudulent purchases, the report said.
Late audits and other financial troubles
During their investigation, the state auditor found that Randleman is yet another municipality that has fallen behind on its annual financial audits. The city began faltering in 2022 when it went without a finance officer from March to December and failed to submit the audit on time for that fiscal year, the report said.
This was also the case for the following fiscal year’s audit, which was submitted a year late in October 2024, the report said. Dan Way, senior communications manager for the North Carolina Office of the State Treasurer, said the audit for fiscal year 2023 is the most recent one the Local Government Commission has received from the city.
Randleman sent an appeal letter to the LGC in June 2025 when its audit status was under review, outlining the challenges the city was dealing with at the time, Way said. Among those challenges were software updates that took place in May 2024 that didn’t go smoothly, causing issues with conversion and unbalanced funds. Auditors were scheduled to come a few months later in September 2024, but because of these issues, the city canceled.
While Sechriest claimed in the letter that the city was in the “wrapping up stage” for the fiscal year 2024 audit and estimated it would be finished by the end of July 2025 or earlier, the audit was never submitted. The LGC is still waiting on it, as well as the audit for fiscal year 2025, and is currently on the LGC’s Unit Assistance List, the report said.
In a response letter to the state auditor, the city of Randleman said it’s working with the North Carolina League of Municipalities to obtain financial support for the 2025 audit and to implement different financial software that will help things run more smoothly.
In addition to the late audits, the state auditor also discovered that the city failed to take out federal and state taxes, Social Security and 401(k) contributions from employees’ pay while the former finance director was still with the city. City officials suggested this could’ve been avoided if finance staff had the proper training and experience, the report said, a problem that has evidently plagued other towns and cities like Rocky Mount.
In the response letter, the city agreed with all of the auditor’s findings. The city said it’s no longer using an outside accounting firm and has also been working on other changes since July 2025, namely in its finance department. This includes “the adoption of financial policies and procedures, improved segregation of duties, enhanced internal controls and a restructuring of staff to meet the needs of a modern municipal finance department,” as well as efforts to catch up on late audits.
“To maintain public trust, residents of the city of Randleman must have confidence in its leadership,” Raper said in the letter. “We hope that with the conclusion of this investigation, the public is reassured that the proper oversight now exists to effectively and efficiently manage the City’s financial resources.”
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