Former Whitefish Housing Authority leader accused of embezzling over $100K

Federal prosecutors have accused a former executive director of the Whitefish Housing Authority of embezzling more than $100,000 from the federally funded organization.

Dwarne Lamont Hawkins, 46, was indicted June 26 by a federal grand jury in U.S. District Court in Missoula on one count of theft from an organization receiving federal funding and five counts of wire fraud. He has pleaded not guilty to all charges.

Hawkins “fraudulently diverted and inflated payroll, made unauthorized credit card purchases with the Whitefish Housing Authority credit card for personal expenses and created fraudulent invoices directing payment to companies over which Hawkins had control,” according to the federal indictment signed by U.S. Attorney for Montana Jesse Laslovich.

The indictment lists five allegedly fraudulent wire transfers of money, the first three amounting to more than $6,000 from August to November in 2023. The last two, both in January, amount to nearly $100,000.

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Prosecutors have not publicly revealed any more specifics of the alleged scheme, and the indictment doesn’t indicate what public program funds may have been diverted from. The Whitefish Housing Authority receives funding from the federal Department of Housing and Urban Development to

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