Govt. workers caught gambling while on the clock

Posted at: 04/23/2009 3:32 PM | Updated at: 04/24/2009 11:25 AM
By: Eyewitness News 4

We found government employees like this man taking government vehicles to casinos to gamble

At a time when finding a job is hard enough, we've discovered it is quite easy to find some government employees hard at work---in front of slot machines.

Investigative reporter Jeremy Jojola made several random visits to casinos in New Mexico, and each time, he found government workers gambling when they should have been working.

Many tried their luck by driving to the casinos in government vehicles. But their trip turned unlucky when they were caught.

We one man we found slacking on the clock works for the state's Children Youth and Families Department in the Juvenile Justice division. A spokesperson for the department, Romain Serna, said footage of the event concerns the department.

"We're disturbed and it's not acceptable behavior, and it's not behavior becoming of any state employee," he said.

Serna says the employee is being investigated and will be punished.

We caught another man playing the slots at 3 on a Thursday afternoon. The man insisted he was on Cibola County business, and just stopped by the casino for lunch.

"I got out of a meeting at the Pyramid and I was going to eat over here, but I couldn't afford it," he said.

"Did you play the slots," Jeremy Jojola asked.

"Yeah, I played a little bit," he said.

The government employee said he didn't really think it was a good idea to show up at the casino in a government vehicle, but said he was off duty.

It turns out he works for the Cibola County Sheriff's Department and was on the clock when we found him at the casino.

The man was suspended for a week without pay, according to the undersheriff of the country, because he still had an hour left on his shift when he took his government vehicle to the casino to play the slots.

At Isleta Casino, we saw a female state employee in her "for official use" federal vehicle. Inside the casino, we recorded her playing the slots with our cell phone camera.

She was inside for less than half an hour. Driving away, we lost her at a red light, but we traced her plate and found the vehicle belongs to the Department of Agriculture in a Las Cruces office.

The government is looking into the case to see if there was vehicle abuse.

Government officials say use of official vehicles is a privilege. If you see the privilege being abused, they ask you report it.

You can report state vehicles at this website:

http://www.generalservices.state.nm.us/tsd/vehicleabuse.html

And federal vehicles at this one:

http://www.gsa.gov/Portal/gsa/ep/contentView.do?contentType=GSA_BASIC&contentId=18183&noc=T

To report misuse of City of Albuquerque vehicles, call 311.

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