Prosecutors allege Carmen Turner put two women on the Tax Office payroll who instead cared for her mother, costing the county about $27,000.
By Jessica Stroh · Thursday, October 22nd
This is a breaking story and will be updated.
A federal grand jury has issued a capias for the arrest of Fort Bend County Tax Assessor-Collector Carmen P. Turner, after a lengthy investigation into allegations Turner used county payroll money to pay two Tax Office employees to care for her elderly mother.
The charges stem from an investigation that began in Fort Bend County nearly two years ago. Court records filed there in 2025 allege that from October 2023 to June 2024, two women were hired as Tax Office employees but spent their workdays caring for Turner’s mother, Cornelia Smith, at the Houston apartment of Turner’s sister.
The two women were paid a combined $27,020.56 in county wages during that period, according to a sworn affidavit by an investigator with the Fort Bend County District Attorney’s Office.
What investigators found
The affidavit says one caregiver told investigators that Turner hired her directly and, instead of assigning her to a tax office, asked her to look after her mother on weekdays from 7:45 a.m. to 4:45 p.m. The woman said Turner told her to say, if asked, that she worked on the second floor of the Missouri City branch.
That employee gave investigators access to her phone. It held text messages with Turner’s sister about the apartment’s Wi-Fi password, gate access and her mother’s evening medication, according to the affidavit.
When the first caregiver needed surgery in early 2024, she told investigators, a second woman replaced her. Texts between the two from February and March 2024 discuss the mother’s appointments and mention “Carmen,” the affidavit says.
County records showed both women clocked in and out using personal cell phones, which investigators said violated office policy. Badge and computer records showed the second woman did not regularly report to a Tax Office location until June 2024, three months after she was hired.
The second woman denied caring for Turner’s mother when interviewed in 2025, according to the affidavit.
Under oath in September 2025, Turner’s sister said paid caregivers came to her home while she was at work, but that she never saw them and did not know their names, the affidavit says.
How the case reached federal court
The investigation began after a fired Tax Office employee complained to the county auditor and posted a video on Facebook alleging corruption in the office. The Auditor’s Office referred the matter to the Fort Bend County District Attorney’s Public Integrity Division in January 2025.
Fort Bend District Attorney Brian Middleton later recused his office because he had represented Turner while in private practice. The Harris County District Attorney’s Office took over the case, its spokesperson confirmed in 2025. How and when the case reached the Texas Rangers and federal prosecutors was not immediately clear.
Turner’s history of indictments
Turner took office in January 2021 and was re-elected in November 2024 to a term that runs through 2028. As tax assessor-collector, she oversees property tax collection and vehicle registration for the county of more than 900,000 residents.
This is not the first time Turner has faced federal charges. In June 2016, a federal grand jury in Houston indicted Turner, then 55 and living in Missouri City, on charges of bankruptcy fraud and making false declarations under penalty of perjury, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of Texas.
She was one of seven people indicted separately in that sweep. Prosecutors alleged each defendant filed multiple bankruptcy cases to win automatic stays that blocked creditors from foreclosing on their property, and failed to list their earlier filings each time.