WILLIAMSON CO.—A Marion business is missing quite a bit of money and prosecutors believe they have the man responsible for it, but the bigger question is: why would anyone put accused filcher Jamal Oxford in charge of money with his criminal history in the first place??
Jamal Oxford's mug shot from Williamson County
Oxford, 33, now of Johnston City, stands charged in Williamson with a single count of Theft greater than $10,000 but less than $100,000 after the electric company for which he worked, Barnett Electric in Marion, had reported missing more than ten grand from their books. While the company reported that Oxford worked for them from March until late August 2011, there’s no indication of when exactly the money was discovered missing. They did, however, say that Oxford had been hired on as an electrician, and had worked also as an ‘office manager’…which was probably their big mistake.
Court documents from Saline and Williamson show that Oxford has had sticky fingers in the past, as well as a distinct drug issue.
In Saline, his felony cases date back to 2006, when he was charged with a count of forgery (a type of theft) and Possession of a Controlled Substance (prescription medication). The forgery was dismissed but the possession count, a Class 4 felony, landed Oxford in DOC ultimately, when a 2007 probation violation got him sent off.
However, Oxford couldn’t stay out of trouble, and he apparently couldn’t stop signing checks that weren’t his own. Several forgery charges later (2008) in Williamson County also got him sent off to DOC.
Somewhere in there, Oxford reportedly embezzled over $20,000 from the Harrisburg Lions Club, but whether that was part of the charges in Saline or something that was uncharged remains unclear to us at this point, and we’ll be researching it as we can.
Point being: even the local constabulary in Williamson County is encouraging employers of prospective new hires to hire a private investigator to check these people out, or to at least look online at Judici.com. While that’s all well and good, we can attest that WE sure as hell couldn’t afford to hire a private investigator to check out every potential new hire, and not everybody’s name pops up on Judici. How anyone’s expected to be able to hire decent help—especially in a specialized field—with rummy people like this out there is beyond us. But everybody just has to keep plugging away…because people like Jamal Oxford, who has a definite problem, are going to keep turning up like bad pennies….and allegedly taking as many of those pennies, allegedly, as they can.