The Virginia State Police is investigating allegations that former Carroll County Chamber of Commerce Executive Director Roger Hawthorne embezzled money from the chamber.

Mike Metcalf, President of the Carroll County Chamber of Commerce, said findings of an internal investigation by the chamber were turned over to the Hillsville Police Department after “somewhere in the vicinity of $50,000” was in question.

Hillsville Police Chief Steve Williams said the findings were brought to his department on Oct. 6. Williams said he immediately turned the case over to the Virginia State Police because a number of the department’s officers serve with Hawthorne on the Hillsville Volunteer Fire Department, and because of the Town of Hillsville’s obvious connections with the Chamber of Commerce.

“We just felt it would be the best thing to turn it over to the State Police,” Williams said.

Virginia State Police Spokesman Sgt. Mike Conroy confirmed Oct. 8 that the state police were asked to investigate an allegation of missing money from the Carroll County Chamber of Commerce. Conroy would not immediately name Hawthorne a suspect, saying the investigation is in the preliminary stages.

“We are still in the preliminary stages of determining if any money is missing or inappropriated, or how much,” Conroy said. “We have just started the investigation.”

Metcalf, however, confirmed that Hawthorne, who resigned his position in early August, was the subject of the investigation.

“Back in late July, (Town Manager Larry South) and I went over to the chamber office and we started seeing some things that hadn’t been taken care of. So the board basically asked Roger to tender his resignation, which he did,” Metcalf said. “Then we conducted our own internal investigation, going through paperwork and piecing things together over the two-year period from January of 2006, when Roger took the position, until late July of this year to get a handle of what was going on.”

During the investigation, Metcalf said the chamber looked through financial records and checks written that didn’t appear to be chamber-related.

“We summarized those and came up with a number in the vicinity of $50,000,” Metcalf said.

Metcalf pointed out that Hawthorne was owed salary during his tenured period, however.

“Whether some of this was in lieu of salary or not will be left for the state (police) to ascertain. If you took what we agreed on as compensation during the tenure period and his time on duty — you have to remember he is also involved with the fire department and was gone a lot for fires in North Carolina and other places, and his granddaughter’s birth — I’d say we are looking at anywhere between $25,000 and $50,000.”

Metcalf said the chamber approached Hawthorne about making restitution, but Hawthorne wasn’t able to do so.

“So based on that and our findings, we turned it over to criminal investigation,” Metcalf said.

He estimated it took about 45 days to go through paperwork, checkbooks and bank statements for a spreadsheet analysis.

The Carroll County Chamber of Commerce does not have a huge operating budget, so Metcalf said the missing funds “left us hurting pretty good.”

He said the chamber is currently looking for a new director, and so far several candidates have expressed interest.

“What we are looking for is somebody with a pretty good working knowledge of the county so when out-of-towners come to the chamber they can bury them in brochures for attractive places to visit, restaurants and parks,” Metcalf said. “We are looking for somebody maybe three days a week for somewhere between five-to-six hours a day. But we have some people that have expressed interest and we’ll take it from there.”