‘Phony as a $3 bill’: Tarrant County district clerk rejects claims of mismanagement
Former Arlington City Council member Ruby Faye Woolridge called for an investigation into Tarrant County district clerk Tom Wilder citing news reports accusing him of mismanaging bond funds, in a press release Wednesday.
Woolridge is running against Wilder in the Nov. 8 general election.
Her accusations stem from a Sept. 7 Fort Worth Weekly article alleging Wilder’s office misplaced bond funds that resulted in a man accused of non-payment of child support to spend two months in Tarrant County jail in 2019.
“There’s some infraction that has been brought forward and some action must be done to remedy that,” she said. “I mean this is a taxpayer who’s been wronged.”
Wilder said the claims in the article and Woolridge’s accusations were “as phony as a $3 bill.”
The article states Wilder’s office accepted a silver bond as collateral, but Wilder countered he’s required by state law to stamp and file all court documents submitted to his office.
He said the silver bond submitted by the man was not a sufficient form of payment, and said the bond itself was fraudulent.
“Those are fraudulent documents. No bank would ever take those,” Wilder said.
Woolridge said the case demonstrates the lack of accountability at the clerk’s office .
Wilder responded that Woolridge doesn’t know what she’s talking about.
He said his office gets two or three of these cases a week in which people try to pass off what he described as fraudulent documents when putting up collateral for bonds.
This story was originally published September 22, 2022 at 12:12 PM.
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