Some Port Everglades Employees Under Investigation For Fictitious Purchases

A Port Everglades plumber was fired, another quit and current and former port public works employees are under suspicion amid a quiet investigation into apparent out-of-control spending using county credit cards.

How much county money vanished over the years without anyone at the port or the county purchasing department noticing is not known. But a county source familiar with the investigation that is focused on allegedly fictitious purchases said authorities now have identified a decade’s worth of suspicious purchases by just one port worker totaling $1.1 million.

Plumber David Dean Moore was fired Aug. 16 after investigators determined he had abused his assigned purchasing card, or P-Card, to buy faucets, backflow preventer repair kits and more than 100 feet of brass pipe that were never received by the port, according to a Broward County report.

For example, a description of the incident in Moore’s county personnel jacket says he bought 11 faucets “represented on P-Card invoices (2017-2018) as being purchased and installed by Mr. Moore in Cruise Terminal No. 2.” But an inspection of Terminal 2 by port management on July 25 found that none of the faucets were installed there or “at any other locations on port property,” the report says.