Whistle-blower: Lee School District ignored reasons for overcharges; officials will take another look

NAPLES — Lee County School District officials are examining their Office Depot purchases again. And again, they’re not likely to find anything, according to the whistle-blower who says he helped Office Depot mislead public agencies like the district.

They’re not likely to get the public’s tax dollars refunded, as other Southwest Florida agencies have, whistle-blower David Sherwin says, because they’ve always been looking in the wrong place.

“It’s comparable to a person telling a farmer that someone is stealing apples out of their orchard, and the farmer goes and takes inventory of their oranges,” Sherwin said after learning of the actions district officials took in response to allegations they were being overcharged by Office Depot.

It’s the latest development following Sherwin’s declaration last week he would seek criminal indictments of Superintendent James Browder and other area government officials through a statewide grand jury Gov. Charlie Crist announced he is seeking last week.

Photo by MICHEL FORTIER

Fort Myers resident and disgruntled former Office Depot employee David Sherwin has been airing allegations of overcharging on the company's contracts since being fired in April 2008. "It's been a disaster," says Sherwin. "I'm as close to broke as you can be without being legally broke. But it's like poker, once you're all in you don't walk away from the table. Sherwin hopes to have an investigation of Office Depot in all 50 states. Michel Fortier/Staff

Sherwin said the officials failed to follow-up on allegations they were being duped by Office Depot, which is currently being investigated by six states and four federal agencies in relation to its government contract practices.

Specifically, Sherwin was outraged Browder would refuse to conduct an extensive audit of his district’s office and school supply purchases. The Lee County Clerk of Courts had offered to conduct the audit, after completing a similar audit for Lee County of the exact same contract. The audit found overcharges and the county received a $58,000 refund. Browder refused the offer.

In response, Browder noted the district had looked at the purchases and found no reason to pay for the audit, estimated at $20,000 to $40,000. Then, on Thursday, Lee County School District Internal Audit Director Bob Brown said the district would take another look at the purchases.

“We are going to basically use the same procedures,” Brown said. “We’re just going to do a different time period, compare those invoice prices to a couple of different sources.”

The problem, though, says Sherwin, is the district isn’t listening to the other agencies that have reported overcharges, the media’s reports of the allegations, and the constant stream of e-mails he has sent out to district officials since becoming a whistle-blower in the Florida Attorney General’s investigation of the contract.

Brown said the district has been comparing the prices it paid to prices listed on the Office Depot catalog and saved versions of the Office Depot Web site at the time of the transactions to ensure all three match up.

However, what the district should have been doing is what other agencies have done, Sherwin said, comparing the prices it paid before and after the contract switched to a new pricing plan, which was first made available to the company’s contract holders Jan. 2, 2006.

“Do you know how many times we’ve given them specific instructions on what they should be doing, and you’re telling me this guy didn’t even know what he was doing?” Sherwin said. “When you have someone that doesn’t understand the allegations, I’m dumbfounded. That’s why the government is so broke.”

Many of the allegations surrounding the contract Office Depot has with more than 10,000 agencies across the country, including some in Southwest Florida, circulate around the pricing option, known as “option two.”

Sherwin, who lives in Fort Myers, was the one who sold option two to Southwest Florida government agencies, including the Lee County School District, which spends more on office and school supplies than any other agency in the region, about $2.5 million a year.

Read the Naples Daily News' profile on David Sherwin.

As an Office Depot employee, Sherwin alleges he was told to sell option two as lower pricing, a cost-savings. But option two was more expensive, Sherwin asserts. Selling it as a cost-savings was deceptive and therefore fraudulent, he says. They’re allegations Office Depot flatly denies.

Brown said that because the district’s contract at the time of the first analysis was for option two prices, and not the original, option one prices, he had not conducted a comparison between the two. He also said — after learning that other agencies had recouped money by comparing prices before and after the pricing plan switch — he would look at the other method.

“I certainly will go back and ask for option one prices,” said Brown. “Whether we have any recourse, that’s another story.”

Sherwin said the taxpayers should be concerned it took this long for the district to listen, and continues to accuse other agencies, including the Collier County School Board, Lee County Board of County Commissioners, City of Fort Myers and the City of Cape Coral, of failing to do everything they could have done or should be doing to protect taxpayers.

“The school district has just proven to be completely negligent and incompetent,” Sherwin said. “The taxpayers should be outraged at this.”