a day ago
Former Portage firefighter accused of $93,000 in pay fraud
A former Portage firefighter faces felony charges that accuse him of using a cellphone payroll app to falsely claim $93,001.11 in pay he didn't earn over four years.
William Thomas Lundy III, 25, of Michigan City, was charged Thursday with two Level 5 felonies of fraud and theft. He was booked into Porter County Jail late Thursday night and has since bonded out, according to jail records.
Lundy left the Portage Fire Department in April, city records show. He is the son of Bill Lundy, a retired Portage Fire Department employee who served as chief from 2006 to 2009.
A probable cause statement filed in Porter Superior Court outlines how Lundy's former supervisors at the Portage Fire Department and the Portage Police Department discovered the fraudulent scheme.
One of Lundy's former colleagues in January happened to be perusing the Indiana Gateway website to see the pay of various city employees. The website is an online portal for municipal finances, including salaries.
When he happened to see that Lundy's pay was comparable to other firefighters, suspicions were raised because he knew as a fellow paramedic, that Lundy hadn't worked a significant amount of overtime.
A check of the master work schedule confirmed that Lundy had worked 72 overtime hours in 2024. The man expressed his concern to Lundy, who allowed him to look at the Automatic Data Payroll (ADP) app on his phone, according to court records.
The colleague then compared the department's timecard to three or four ADP pay documents and noticed the overtime hours claimed didn't match the Portage Fire Department schedule. It was estimated that Lundy had earned between $25,000 and $30,000 more than what he was entitled.
When confronted about the overpayment, Lundy replied that the pay seemed normal to him. Lundy then approached Deputy Fire Chief Jeremy Himan and asked if he was in trouble. Himan stated that the matter was being investigated, and there would be no issue unless he did something intentionally wrong regarding his overpayment.
The investigation found that Lundy had used the unique personal employee number from his ADP payroll app, and some of his work hours submitted didn't match those authorized by Portage Fire Department personnel, charging documents state.
Portage Police Detective Robert Shrader and Chief City Clerk Carrie Belt then compared records of the hours Lundy submitted on his ADP app with hours on the master schedule.
As a result, it was found that starting in 2022, Lundy allegedly claimed 554 hours he didn't work for additional pay of $16,599.40. That amount grew to 1,182 hours fraudulently claimed in 2023, when he collected $36.404.45.
Last year, Lundy was accused of claiming 1,072 additional hours that resulted in $39,018.87 collected. This year, Lundy had collected $978.39 in unauthorized pay.
As an extra step, the work schedules were examined to see if Lundy had happened to trade shifts with a fellow firefighter. A check of the department logs found that he wasn't listed on calls of service for the days that he falsely claimed to be working on his payroll app.
