Ex-UNM assistant indicted in missing funds

venting him from finishing his final season with the Lobos.

He has since been placed on UNM’s “Do Not Hire List” with the human resources department, according to a university audit.

Hopkins was indicted on one count of felony embezzlement and five counts of forgery after UNM’s internal audit in 2016 determined that he used his P-Card for thousands of dollars’ worth of personal and falsified transactions

He faces 16½ years in prison and $35,000 in fines if found guilty on all six charges.

Bernalillo County District Attorney spokesman Michael Patrick said Hopkins will be arraigned in the next 10 days and then face a 30-day window to have a scheduling conference to lay out the deadlines for the case.

“This type of white-collar crime, or this type of financial crime, just takes and extraordinary amount of legwork to put together,” Patrick said. “Prosecutors have been working on this for a number of months.”

The case has been assigned to 2nd District Court Judge Christina Argyres in Albuquerque.

The District Attorney’s Office has been reaching out to every state where Hopkins may have gone while using his P-Card, building is case by collecting evidence over most of the past two years.

“That’s why this case took a great deal of time to get to the indictment phase,” Patrick said.

UNM’s audit found $53,984 in cash advances were taken without documentation, falsified documentation for $3,600 in cash withdrawals and $5,827 was spent on Hopkins’ P-Card for personal lodging, airfare, rental cars, meals and entertainment.

The audit also stated that other UNM assistants, Alan Huss and Chris Harriman, as well as an undisclosed team manager, had their signatures forged for cash transactions.

All told, $63,411 that cannot be accounted for by the school. The audit indicated that Hopkins’ P-Card “did not have reasonable restrictions or limits on cash advances for individual, daily or monthly cash advance transactions.”

The audit also found that Neal was not made aware of Hopkins’ alleged misdeeds, but were passed along to UNM’s finance department. No action was taken to suspend his P-Card use.