Former city employee charged with manipulating payroll to steal $28K

TALLAHASSEE, Fla. (WCTV/Gray News) - A former city of Tallahassee employee was charged after he allegedly manipulated payroll logs and paid himself over $28,000.

Harrell Sukhram, 69, was charged with 39 felony criminal charges, including grand theft, organized scheme to defraud, criminal use of personal identification information and offense against computer systems to obtain property.

Court records show that Sukhram manipulated payroll logs to increase his compensation, using multiple fake user profiles he created in the city’s system. To make the accounts, he used the personal information of other city employees, including five who were deceased, per arrest papers.

“Based upon the above preceding facts, there is evidence Harrell Sukhram willfully and knowingly accessed (city) systems and files on the city network, then manipulated the files and data therein (28 Counts), without authorization in violation of (the law),” Tallahassee Police Detective Tammy Pinkerton wrote in a probable cause affidavit.

Judge Stephen Everett ordered Sukhram’s adjudication to be withheld. According to the Florida Bar, that means Sukhram agreed to probation and to pay back fines, and in exchange, he does not have a conviction on his record.

Sukhram was sentenced to one day in jail, one day of probation, and restitution on all 39 charges, records show.

Court documents also say he paid back the money before his final court hearing when he entered a “nolo contendre” plea, which means he admitted the state had the evidence to convict him without formally admitting guilt.

His sentencing came last month, more than two years after his 2023 arrest, per the Leon County Clerk of Courts website.

The city did not announce Sukhram’s termination or his criminal charges in the two years since identifying a “discrepancy” in his pay. When reached by phone Thursday evening, City Manager Reese Goad said the city had no comment, instead referring to court filings.

A filing by the state said that the city’s main goal is “return of the funds in full.”

It’s unclear from the probable cause affidavit if the city informed the other employees that their info had been compromised or if they informed the family of the deceased.

An audit by the city that went back to 2012 “found altering of (city) systems which benefited Sukhram only from 2020-2022,” a detective wrote in Sukhram’s arrest documents.

Records show the city had given Sukhram a raise just months before his crimes began and had unknowingly offered him accommodations, like allowing him to work from home, during his scheme.

Sukhram had submitted a letter of resignation in late 2019 after finding out another employee had received a larger raise than him. But he ended up staying on the Tallahassee payroll after the city agreed to give him a 10% raise, which also retroactively applied to multiple paychecks that year.

Additionally, Sukhram was allowed to work remotely starting in the summer of 2022, the detective wrote. Court records list his title as “Lead Architect for Import/Integration processes.”

Court records show that in early December of that year, Payroll Manager Tricia Scott “detected a discrepancy only on Sukhram’s pay lines.” Three days later, he was suspended.

He was ultimately fired the next week, per the affidavit.

However, Sukhram was able to continue to create fake accounts on the city’s system for four days after he was fired, according to his arrest papers.

When another employee asked Sukhram why he was fired, he responded, “The accusation is that I am not working enough, and there are a couple of paycheck issues,” per court records.

In a later interview with law enforcement, Sukhram said a supervisor had been approving his time card and that a “bug” in the payroll system was crediting him with extra hours.

However, investigators determined that someone with high-level access and “institutional knowledge,” in this case Sukhram, was actually editing a file of payroll exports, not timesheets.

A filing from the state attorney’s office shows that Sukhram is still receiving some retirement funds. But he was forced to forfeit a “significant portion of his retirement benefits” as part of his penalties.