OKLAHOMA CITY (KOKH) — A municipal counselor who had worked for the City of Oklahoma City for nearly 30 years resigned “under duress” over the way OKCPD was handling seized money.
In court documents obtained by FOX 25, former Assistant Municipal Counselor Orval Jones claims more than $400,000 of seized cash had been moved into City accounts without the appropriate process.
In criminal cases where money is seized, that money is supposed to be earmarked go to a defendant’s unpaid court costs, restitution, victims’ fees, probation and incarceration fees.
Jones alleges he worked for eight years to clean up the OKCPD’s property-return process while he was OKCPD’s legal advisor. When he was presented with lists of “unclaimed currency”, he noticed most of the owners were shown as “unknown”.
When seized cash is marked as having unknown ownership, the city can file civil proceedings to move that cash into city accounts.
“I returned the entire list to Deputy Chief Tom Jester with the admonition that the use of “unknown” cannot be used when ownership information is clearly available in the records of OKCPD,” Jones wrote.
Jones said it became clear to him that OKCPD was “resistant to returning money to anyone who had been arrested” in two incidents he lists in his court filing. After that, he proposed ways to simplify the process of seized property which was adopted into city code.
Over the years, the office of the Municipal Counselor and the Oklahoma County District Attorney’s Office cooperated in criminal cases where the city held currency seized from defendants. City attorneys would identify when criminal cases had been filed, and the DA’s office would in turn supply information concerning restitution and unpaid county fees.
That all changed in January 2025, Jones claims.
Jones said that’s when his Police Legal Advisor was promoted to become the supervisor of the Criminal Justice Division, and his immediate supervisor. That person made “several determinations that were contrary to the accepted practice”, Jones alleged.
Jones said the supervisor had a meeting with the DA’s office, and floated the idea that they should examine OKCPD’s lists of “unclaimed currency” to determine whether any criminal cases had been filed, which would in turn determine whether any restitution, court costs or county fees were unpaid.
The DA’s office said they would need criminal case numbers and could not determine property ownership based only on names and police incident numbers.
Jones said several lists of unclaimed property were provided to the DA’s office between January and March 2025. He claims the DA’s office never provided a response to the lists.
In late February and early March 2025, Jones had the OKCPD finalize three separate lists of currency seizures for filing in connection with the March criminal property civil docket. Each list had an attached application and a form affidavit verified by an OKCPD lieutenant. Jones claims he signed off on the lists without knowing they had not been verified to see if there were pending criminal cases attached to them.
Jones said there were several open criminal cases where that money could have been used to pay for restitution and unpaid court costs.
In early March 2025, Jones wrote a lengthy email to OKCPD supervisors explaining the history of previous audits and the need to find criminal cases attached to the unclaimed property. He said he needed dates of birth so he could “ferret out” criminal cases. Jones claims his supervisor instructed OKCPD to leave out identifying dates of birth.
A few days later, Jones said he was permanently removed from the property assignment at the request of the Chief of Police. In late March, the lists of unclaimed property were presented in a civil proceeding with no mention of the jurisdictional issues Jones had been working on.
After that, Jones contacted the City Auditor to express his concern. Jones said more than $400,000 had been moved into City accounts from unclaimed property at OKCPD without “appropriate process”.
“By the City claiming and obtaining a civil court order to transfer these funds to City ownership, the individual owners were not credited with reduction of unpaid costs and the district court was deprived of its right to assert a priority right to payment of uncollected costs from funds in its own custody and under its exclusive jurisdiction,” Jones wrote to his supervising attorney on June 9, 2025.
Jones said his supervising attorney’s response to his email was “negative and dismissive”, and that she wrote him saying “you are not to engage in any work related to property disposition, at any time or for any purpose whatsoever.”
With no help from his supervisors, Jones completed a review of the entire set of unclaimed property lists without city resources and then presented them to the City Auditor in late August. He then resigned under duress in September.
Jones is asking the court to vacate the civil proceedings the city used to move that cash into city accounts.
FOX 25 reached out to the City of Oklahoma City for a comment. Since it involves potential litigation, the City said they were unable to provide a comment.
