Homewood Police Department
Robert Burgett
Former Homewood city finance director Robert Burgett was arrested this week on Class A felony charges alleging Aggravated Theft by Deception in the misappropriation of city funds.
A former City of Homewood finance director remained in custody of Jefferson County on Wednesday after being arrested Tuesday on charges of misappropriation of city funds.
Robert Winston Burgett, 63, was arrested by Homewood police detectives on a warrant obtained through the Jefferson County district attorney's office that alleges a Class A felony charge of aggravated theft by deception.
Burgett was taken into custody at 10 a.m. Tuesday at a residence in Helena, according to Homewood police. He was then taken to the Homewood City Jail and transferred to the Jefferson County Jail, where he remained in custody Wednesday afternoon on a $500,000 cash bond, according to jail records.
The arrest was part of a joint effort by the Homewood Police Department's Criminal Investigation Division with assistance from the Birmingham field office of the FBI and the Jefferson County district attorney's office.
Burgett retired March 31 after almost six years in the role of finance director for Homewood. City officials allege they discovered "irregularities in the movement of city funds" in the days leading up to his retirement, and as a result, the city retained an independent forensic certified public accounting firm to investigate and then notified the Jefferson County district attorney and the FBI.
"Allegations of the misuse of city funds are always disturbing," Homewood Mayor Patrick McClusky said in a statement. "When suspicious transactions were noticed, we quickly and appropriately notified authorities of what we found and took appropriate steps to freeze any questionable disbursements."
As this is an ongoing investigation, McClusky told The Homewood Star it would be "inappropriate for us to comment [further] on any pending criminal litigation."
Homewood City Council President Alex Wyatt said the city will continue to press forward with efforts to recover any misappropriated funds.
"We will closely examine how the misappropriations occurred," Wyatt said in a statement. "We are making every effort to recover the funds that were part of any fraud that was committed."
Editor's note: This story was updated at 12:06 p.m. to correct the number of years that Robert Burgett was finance director for the city of Homewood. It was almost six years.
