High-ranking South Dakota officials warned of fraud years before action

Employees say reports of suspicious activity dismissed by department of revenue management, cabinet secretary

The Department of Revenue’s office across from the State Capitol. (Austin Goss/The Dakota Scout)

Internal reports of a potential fraud by a state employee within the South Dakota Department of Revenue went unchecked by top department officials for years, an investigation by The Dakota Scout has unveiled.

Leadership within the state agency that employed Sandra O’Day, a former supervisor in the motor vehicles division who used her state position to create fake vehicle titles that were then used to obtain bank loans, received multiple tips from former coworkers about suspicious activity over the course of the years. But they failed to act on those tips, or alert authorities before O’Day’s death earlier this year.

That’s according to at least five former coworkers of O’Day, who allege their highest-ranking bosses were directly notified of suspicious behavior involving O’Day as early as 2019.

Among those are Jim Terwilliger — now serving as Bureau of Finance and Management (BFM) Commissioner, who was revenue secretary through several years of O’Day’s service as a state employee, and Rosa Yeager, director of South Dakota’s Motor Vehicles Division - the department responsible for vehicle titling.

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