WBRSO employee arrested for allegedly stealing $150,000

BATON ROUGE, La. — The politics of an upcoming election appear to be taking center stage when it comes to getting any information on cases from the West Baton Rouge Parish Sheriff’s Office lately, including the most recent arrest of Mandy Miller.

Miller is facing five felonies and was arrested on Friday, Jan. 27th. It was the subject of an Unfiltered with Kiran report in early October 2022 where Miller was accused of stealing over $150,000 from the West Baton Rouge Sheriff’s Office.

Since then, Mandy Miller has been arrested and charged with the following:

Felony theft (maximum sentence up to twenty years)
Malfeasance (maximum sentence up to five years)
Second degree injuring public records (maximum sentence one year)
Forgery (maximum sentence up 10 yrs)
Computer tampering (maximum sentence up to five years)
Public property, duties of officials, employees and custodians (civil action for entity to collect its money)

Inside the Investigation

The Louisiana Legislative Auditor is leading the investigation into Miller. So far, they have said between July 1, 2018 and July 31, 2022, Miller “while conducting her official duties as a deputy sheriff traffic clerk, would take payment from traffic fines and in turn manipulated/altered the computerized accounting records of the West Baton Rouge Parish Sheriff’s Office.”

The affidavit for probable cause for Miller went on to say, “By doing this, Miller was able to conceal the transactions. Miller committed the actions listed above (her charges) in order to take monies from received payments ($158,852.00) for her personal use. This is a violation of the charges listed above. Due to her actions, Miller intended to permanently deprive the citizens of West Baton Rouge Parish and the West Baton Rouge Parish Sheriff’s Office.”

Lack of Information

Since the arrest last week, sources tell Unfiltered with Kiran that the West Baton Rouge Sheriff’s Office has now launched an internal investigation to WBRSO employees to determine if anyone is leaking any information on this particular case to the media. One day after WBRSO was called out on investigating employees, they have since called off the internal investigation.

UWK has repeatedly called Sheriff Mike Cazes to get updates on this case, but no one answers or responds to calls or texts.

The two people who were authorized to speak to the media, Zack Simmers & Dale Simoneaux, are now both running for sheriff as current Sheriff Cazes is not seeking another term. Due to that, there was an internal battle within the agency that if one spoke to the media more, one would be getting additional publicity and that’s why now, neither are permitted to speak to the media.

With Sheriff Cazes not answering calls, there appears to be no point person for the media to speak to about \cases. It’s why Miller’s current status with WBRSO is unknown at this time.

At last check in 2022, Miller was using her vacation hours with the sheriff’s office while on leave.

Meanwhile, the Legislative Auditor’s report into the Miller case does not become public until at least the middle of February when all parties have had a chance to respond.

UWK did call Miller, but as soon as we identified who we were, she hung up.