FREDERICK — A Tillman County Sheriff’s Department administrator, Frederick Richard Houck, was charged with embezzlement from the county jail commissary.
An affidavit filed by an Oklahoma State Bureau of Investigation agent relates that on Feb. 18, Tillman County Sheriff Oscar Juanes requested OSBI assistance with an investigation into suspected embezzlement.
Tillman County Jail Administrator Michael Logan was notified that same day that the jail commissary account was “negative.”
Logan and Secretary Gwen Scypion discovered that between September 2024 and February 2025 approximately 30 debit cards were made and issued “in the name of former inmates of the Tillman County Jail who had already been released” prior to the dates on which the cards were created, OSBI agent Daniel Perkins wrote in his affidavit.
Perkins said Logan told him that use of debit cards was discontinued approximately two years ago “and the only method of paying an inmate the money left on his ‘books’ was by” a physical check.
Subsequently Logan “retrieved a box of debit cards” from Security Chief Richard Houck’s office, Perkins reported.
Logan sent an email to Perkins on March 3, informing him that Houck had been fired “due to abandonment of his position” and that Houck “was aware of the OSBI investigation.”
Perkins wrote that video surveillance footage and financial records showed Houck creating debit cards and using them to “retrieve money” from an ATM in Frederick on four dates in January and five dates in February.
Houck was interviewed in the Tillman County Sheriff’s Office on April 7 by Perkins and OSBI Lt. Michael Francis. According to the affidavit, Houck admitted he used login credentials “to load money onto debit cards, go to the ATM at Banc-First in Frederick,” and withdrew $3,000 using the debit cards over an eight-month period.
Houck, 42, of Mangum and Altus, is charged in Tillman County District Court with two felonies: embezzlement and computer fraud. Bond was set at $50,000 cash.
The OSBI issued a press release which reported that Houck was booked into the Tillman County Jail on April 7. However, Southwest Ledger learned that Houck was confined in the Jackson County Jail on April 12. A Tillman County Jail employee indicated Houck was transferred from Frederick to Altus for his personal safety because “he’s not real popular around here.”