A King County grants administrator stumbled across a two-year-old letter buried in department files. What he found in that letter — and what happened after he reported it — is now at the center of a sweeping Seattle Times investigation into how King County’s largest department ignored fraud warnings for years while continuing to cut checks to contractors who couldn’t prove they did the work.
The Times published the investigation Wednesday morning.
Tom Fullum was working as a grants administrator for the King County Department of Community and Human Services when he came across the old anonymous complaint. It accused a county contractor of pocketing thousands of dollars to run job training programs for disadvantaged young adults while doing virtually nothing.
Fullum flagged it. He emailed his supervisor saying he was aware of potential fraud that needed to be investigated. King County fired him four days later.
Fullum sued the county for wrongful termination. The county claims he was let go for performance reasons and has declined further comment while the case is active.
“If somebody calls you up about potential fraud or a serious problem, you should probably raise it to the top of the pile,” Fullum told the Times.
His complaint to the state auditor’s office eventually prompted an investigation. The state found county officials had failed to investigate the original fraud...
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