Ex Tuscaloosa Co. license commissioner pleads guilty, sentenced in felony ethics case

Former Tuscaloosa County License Commissioner Lynne Campbell Robbins will be spending a little over two years in jail and must pay back nearly $140,000 to Tuscaloosa County after pleading guilty to several ethics charges.

Those charges include using her public employment for personal gain, first-degree theft and computer tampering for the purpose of committing an unlawful act or to defraud, all of which are felonies.

As part of her plea deal, Robbins will serve 28 months in the custody of the Alabama Department of Corrections and will pay $136,511 in restitution to Tuscaloosa County.

“A public servant is entrusted with protecting taxpayer funds, but Robbins took advantage of that trust for personal gain,” said Alabama Attorney General Steve Marshall. “Public corruption has a ripple effect, and we must root out the problem to rebuild trust in our communities.”

Robbins served as Tuscaloosa County License Commission between October 2017 and December 2019, and worked for the License Commission since 1999. She was indicted by a Tuscaloosa County grand jury in August 2021.

As part of Robbins’ plea agreement, she agreed that she used her position to take $136,000 from Tuscaloosa County between 2016 and 2019. In 2019, she wrote a series of 16 checks from her personal checking account made payable to the License Commission totaling a little under $5,000, placed those checks into the License Commission’s cash drawers and took the same amount in cash.

Those checks were returned unpaid because of insufficient funds in Robbins’ personal checking account, and Robbins did not return the face value of the checks and did not pay the $30 fee charged for bounced checks at the office.

Robbins also used her access to the License Commission’s network and database to access the public’s licensing transactions to make money by refunding a sales tax or license plate transaction and taking the amount of the refund out of the License Commission’s cash deposits. Robbins obtained nearly $132,000 through those actions.