At approximately 3:12 p.m. Thursday, a criminal investigation by Indiana State Police Detective Mike Lorona resulted in the arrest of Galveston Town Marshal Steven Jones, 47, rural Kokomo. Jones was arrested when Indiana State Police Detectives Mike Lorona and Josh Maller served him with a Howard Superior Court I arrest warrant alleging two criminal charges for delivery of a false sales document and possession of a fraudulent sales document.
Lorona started an investigation after receiving information that Jones, a former contracted Northwestern School Corporation employee, attempted to defraud the corporation.
The investigation revealed that Jones had been contracted to drive school buses, which he owned, for the Northwestern School Cooperation. The corporation ended the contract in 2019. The school corporation had installed GPS equipment on a bus owned by Jones. After ending the contract, the school corporation had to retrieve the GPS equipment from Jones’s bus. The corporation agreed to pay repair bills for some of the damage caused to the bus during installation of the GPS equipment.
Evidence revealed that Jones allegedly created fraudulent invoices and purportedly submitted them to the Northwestern School Corporation for reimbursement. The invoices were for alleged repairs of damage caused to one of Jones’s’ buses during installation of the GPS equipment. During the course of the investigation, Lorona discovered the repairs were not completed as indicated on the fraudulent invoices.
Jones was incarcerated in the Howard County Jail with a $10,000 bond