By Shawna Morrison
The Roanoke Times
CHRISTIANSBURG, Va. — When Shane Adams bought shirts for himself or his wife or spent hundreds of dollars on liquor, he did it as part of an effort to draw people to Montgomery County and to maintain good relationships in the community, he told police.
In the second day of testimony in Adams’ trial in Montgomery County Circuit Court on seven felony embezzlement charges dating from 2005 to 2009, jurors watched recordings of police interviews with Adams from June and July 2009 in which he explained purchases he had made.
Adams was fired in late June 2009 from his post as the president and CEO of the Montgomery County Chamber of Commerce. Adams had held that position since 2002, when the chamber was created by the merger of the Blacksburg and Christiansburg-Montgomery chambers.
His trial is expected to conclude today. Thursday, Blacksburg police Detective Ryan Hite testified that he interviewed Adams, 46, on June 27, 2009, and July 9, 2009, after receiving a complaint from the chamber. In one of the interviews, Adams can be heard telling Hite that board members didn’t understand how his job worked and had been accusing him of dishonesty.
“I’m not trying to do anything wrong here,” Adams told Hite in one interview. “I’m trying to enhance the chamber’s image.”
He told Hite that part of his job was to entertain people who might have the ability to bring other people to visit Montgomery County. He would buy beer for golf tournaments, for example, and spent more than $600 buying liquor to stock a hospitality suite at a weeklong conference for the U.S. Chamber of Commerce Southeast Institute Board of Regents in Athens, Ga.
The board, he told Hite, had not created any policies “that said this is exactly what you can spend money on.”
“I’m expected to do all this with very little guidance,” he said.
The 20 board members may have had 20 different opinions on what was acceptable, he said.
He said he would buy Virginia Tech shirts occasionally “for me to wear as promotional stuff.” He bought his wife Virginia Tech maternity shirts for the same reason before they attended the Athens event, he said.
Former chamber board member Dave Edwards testified Thursday that in August 2007 he questioned Adams about “minor expenses” including the maternity clothing and repairs to his truck. He said he told Adams that it was against the travel policy to file for mileage reimbursement and for truck repairs because the reimbursement covered the cost of wear-and-tear.
He said he was unaware that Adams was receiving money from a tourism organization -- operated as a separate entity out of the same office as the chamber -- for creative services, such as designing advertisements, and that Adams was giving himself and other chamber employees a year-end bonus.
Adams’ lawyer, Jimmy Turk, handed Edwards a financial statement that reflected a 31 percent increase in salary costs for the month of December.
“Did you read your documents that you got when you were on the chamber?” Turk asked him.
Edwards said Adams “was hiring and firing staff members all the time” so he wouldn’t have questioned the change in salary costs.
“Who does he answer to and look to for guidance” other than the board, Turk asked Edwards.
“The board,” Edwards said.
“That’s what I said. The board,” Turk said.
Assistant Commonwealth’s Attorney Andrew Stephens asked Edwards if, when he saw “capital improvements” on the financial statements, he felt he should have to ask Adams if he was making improvements to his beach house.
Edwards said he did not.
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