Second Seminole County deputy charged in overtime fraud investigation

A second Seminole County deputy has been charged in the widening overtime-fraud investigation, intensifying scrutiny of how allegedly false payroll claims passed internal checks inside one of the county’s most visible public agencies.

Deputy Kevin Jones was charged with one count of organized fraud, a third-degree felony, after investigators said he claimed overtime that was not actually worked. Jones turned himself in after a warrant was issued, and Sheriff Dennis Lemma served him with a notice of proposed discipline for termination. The sheriff’s office said Jones had worked there since January 2016 and had been suspended in August 2025 pending the investigation.

The new charge comes only weeks after Deputy Nestor Nieves Jr. was arrested on Feb. 26 in the same probe. Investigators said Nieves submitted timesheets reflecting overtime hours he did not work during off-duty details from Oct. 1, 2024, through Aug. 31, 2025. News 6 reported that investigators found inconsistencies between Nieves’s assignments at the Northwest Branch Library in Lake Mary and an earlier school assignment in Winter Park, including alleged timing gaps, use of his location being turned off while on detail, and shifts where he reportedly left early but still claimed four hours of overtime.

News 6 reported that Nieves is accused of pocketing $5,814 in the period under review. The sheriff’s office said he also faces one count of organized fraud, and that he had been employed since September 2015 before being suspended in late August 2025 pending the investigation.

The Florida law used in both cases, section 817.034, is the state’s organized fraud statute, a felony-level charge aimed at schemes to defraud rather than simple payroll mistakes. That makes the allegations more serious than an accounting dispute. They point to a breakdown in oversight, record keeping, and supervisor review in a system that relies on public trust as much as public money.

The sheriff’s office said one additional deputy was also suspended in a related, active investigation involving similar alleged conduct, though no further details had been released. For Seminole County taxpayers, the immediate concern is not just how much money may have been improperly billed, but whether the office had enough controls to catch the problem before it became a second criminal case. With two deputies now charged and another under review, the pressure on the agency to explain its overtime approval process has only grown.