HIGHLANDS COUNTY, Fla. – A Highlands County Sheriff’s Office detention deputy was arrested yesterday and charged with nine felonies after an investigation revealed he had faked doctor’s notes to extend his medical leave on three different occasions.
Jore Arnold Stanberry, 41, was booked into the Highlands County Jail at 4:35 p.m. and charged with three counts of altering a public record, three counts of falsifying a document while a public servant and three counts of passing a forged instrument. All are third-degree felonies.
“As Sheriff, I have an obligation to the citizens of Highlands County to hold the members of the Highlands County Sheriff’s Office to a high standard of behavior and ethics,” Sheriff Paul Blackman said. “This former deputy took an oath to protect our citizens, and you can’t do that if you don’t show up to work. He also put his fellow deputies at risk and disrupted their lives by not being on his post when scheduled. That in itself would be bad enough, but the fact he committed crimes so he could miss even more work is so much worse.”
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The investigation revealed that Stanberry had changed the dates he was allowed to come back to work on three separate doctor’s notes. The first, dated Jan. 3, 2022, was altered to change the date he could come back from Feb. 8 to Feb. 9.
The second note, dated Oct. 13, 2022, was altered to change the date he could come back to work from Oct. 15 to Oct. 19. The third note, dated Feb. 24, 2023, changed the date he could come back from March 3 to March 8.
Stanberry’s supervisors had become suspicious of him due to many hours of missed work.
In the 42-two-week pay periods between July 28, 2021, and March 7, 2023, Stanberry worked less than a third of the hours available to him and took 365 hours of sick leave and almost 225 hours of annual and administrative leave. There were 22 pay periods where he logged zero hours worked out of a possible 86 hours of regular time and received no pay. There were also 42 days of “no-call, no-show” absences. That led to a closer look at the doctor’s notes he had turned in, which revealed the alterations.
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Since doctor’s notes can only be written by doctors, altering them constitutes forgery. Since Stanberry was a government employee, those notes are also a public record, making it illegal to alter them in any way.
Stanberry’s employment at the Highlands County Sheriff’s Office during the period in question has a value in addition to simply the hours he works and is paid for.
His employment provided him with medical benefits, ongoing accrual of annual/sick leave, and retirement benefits. Even when Stanberry took entire weeks off and received no pay, the Highlands County Sheriff’s Office was still responsible for its portion of his health insurance.
Stanberry began working for the HCSO on Jan. 2, 2020. He resigned shortly before being arrested. He was released from the jail after posting a $9,000 bond.
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“As with all cases when a deputy is arrested, now that the criminal investigation is complete there will be an internal affairs investigation. The results of that investigation will be reported to the state, which will decide if Stanberry keeps his law enforcement standards,” said HCSO.
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