Blackmon requested forensic look at the department when he joined last July
The results of a forensic audit of the Osceola County Sheriff’s Office requested in the wake of June 2025 arrest of since-suspended Sheriff Marcos Lopez are in, and the news is relatively solid.
When interim Sheriff Chris Blackmon was named to the post after Lopez’s arrest on racketeering charges, the new sheriff expressed interest in having a forensic audit conducted regarding certain department aspects during early talks with Osceola County and the OCSO budget. The county agreed to take on the cost, and the Sheriff’s office shared the results Monday.
Blackmon said that, overall, auditors found “a few minor issues,” which he said have since been corrected or are in the process of being corrected.
“We’re glad to report to Osceola County taxpayers that no major issues were found during the Forensic Financial audit,” he said.
Among the findings:
Evidence—An inventory of high-liability evidence items conducted on Sept. 30 and Oct. 1 found 100% of the items, like currency, guns, drugs and jewelry, in a cross section of thousands of general evidence items, were accounted for.
“The FDLE team observed excellent business practices by the OCSO evidence section regarding the security, safety and integrity of the high-liability evidence,” that part of the report reads. “The evidence packaging and overall organization of the evidence locations were exceptional. The professionalism of your staff made it easy for the FDLE team to conduct this inventory.”
Forensic Financial Analysis—private firm Forvis Mazars, LLP evaluated the OCSO’s accounting from Jan. 1, 2021 through June 30, 2025. Of most concern to the department was any misuse of public funds through procurement card or expenditures, or possible conflicts of interest between personnel and vendors.
The firm recommended OCSO perform routine analyses of “P-card” usage, limits and necessity, and continue to emphasize the training required when staff uses such purchasing processes. The firm did find “risk factors” in P-card activity such as multiple same-day purchases with the same merchant that together would exceed individual transaction limits, cards that “routinely approached assigned monthly limits,” or that “appeared higher than necessary” to support monthly expenditures.
“We identified instances of concentrated, inactive, shared or repeatedly high-limit P-cards, without evidence of a standardized, periodic process to assess ongoing card necessity, limit appropriateness or usage patterns,” the Forvis Mazars report read.
Regarding the former ousted administration: “Currently, OCSO has not engaged us to investigate the allegations against the former Sheriff or former OCSO Executive Director (Nirva Rodriguez),” the report states.
Going forward, the firm recommended the Sheriff’s Office perform routine P-card portfolio and vendor classification analysis, standardize vendor processes and make use of a “Fraud, Waste and Abuse Hotline Program” online submission system that is in place but appeared to Forvis Mazars to be inactive.
Information Technology —FDLE completed an I.T. analysis on Aug. 13, 2025, about eight months after its prior audit. The overall compliance finding was listed as “Compliant”.
“FDLE highlighted several areas of concern, which have been or are in the process of being addressed,” the Sheriff’s Office said in a statement, noting areas of concern were highlighted and that, “At this time, 80% of the non-compliant areas have been addressed … We continue to work towards updating the areas that were addressed to make this section compliant and more efficient.”
Compliant logs and up-to-date records with statewide digital accounts and a need for upgraded network authentication (high-level security) processes were discussed in that part of the report, but the overall network and system component inventory “were both excellent.”
“The Sheriff ’s Office utilizes fully compliant practices for both digital and physical media protection,” the report reads. “The Sheriff’s Office is fully within compliance standards.”
The Sheriff reinstated the position of I.T. director, “Which was eliminated under the previous administration,” its statement said Monday.
