BY DAN HILDEBRAN
Telegraph Staff Writer
STARKE— Deputies arrested a former candidate for Bradford County’s Supervisor of Elections on July 3 after victims in two separate incidents accused him of writing worthless checks.
Storm Zedra Hamilton, 30, of Starke was arrested for two counts of fraud-insufficient funds check.
In 2020, the defendant ran for the open seat of Bradford’s Supervisor of Elections following the retirement of Terry Vaughan.
Hamilton, running with no party affiliation, lost to Republican Amanda Seyfang in the Nov. 3 general election, garnering 22% of the vote.
According to a sworn complaint, the victim and her attorney contacted Bradford Sheriff’s Detective Michael Garmon on Aug. 15, 2022, claiming that the defendant persuaded the Wellington, Florida victim to invest $100,000 in exchange for a one percent stake in Eastern MedWaste, Hamilton’s upstart biomedical waste management business.
“After several months had passed with no dividends being received by (the victim) from Eastern MedWaste, she texted Storm in hopes of getting some clarification,” wrote Garmon. “After receiving several text messages which appeared to be non-committal on Storm’s behalf, (the victim) requested a full refund of the money she invested.”
The investigator added that after several more months, the victim received a $100,000 check from Hamilton, but when she attempted to deposit the negotiable instrument at a credit union, she was told there were not enough funds to cover the check.
Garmon wrote that he obtained statements for Hamilton’s account from August 2021 through August 2022, and at the time he wrote the check to the victim on Feb. 11, 2022, the balance of the account was $162.97.
“Furthermore,” Garmon wrote, “it was found that at no point in the one-year period of time was there ever sufficient funds in the checking account…to cover (a) check written for $100,000.00.”
In the second count, Bradford Union Cattle Show and Sale officers claimed the defendant wrote a worthless check for $5,510.97 on Sept. 20, 2022.
