The former Martinsville city manager logged more than $15,000 on a city-issued credit card for which forensic auditors could find no business purpose, among the many findings in a review that has spurred sweeping changes.
Aretha Ferrell-Benavides was fired from her city manager’s job in August 2025 for alleged violations of various policies and unsatisfactory job performance. In return, she filed a complaint with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, defending her performance and charging discrimination.
The forensic audit from Brown Edwards in Roanoke examined credit card purchases from Ferrell-Benavides and city employees, the city’s budget amendment process and hiring practices. The 46-page document is available on the city’s website.
The manager’s credit card charges cover expenses ranging from hotel rooms to Uber rides. The audit says it shows “inadequate or non-existent internal controls as there are transactions that are in direct violation of the City’s purchasing card policy.”
However, the lack of paper trails does not prove fraud or abuse, it says.
Charges for meals and lodging sometimes exceeded government limits from February 2024 to June 2025, the period that auditors examined.
The city’s travel policy sets a $45 limit for meals or incidental expenses, or an amount below the General Service Administration’s per-day rate for the locality where the lodging is located. Meal and incidental charges exceeded GSA limits by $1,730 from February 2024 to June 2025. Lodging expenses exceeded those limits by $18,409 during the same period.
The audit also notes that the city manager’s budget was nearly 37% larger than the one for the city manager in Bristol, which is of similar size.
The comparison illustrates “the disproportionately high expenditures budgeted for the Former City Manager’s department,” the audit says.
The audit also reviewed hiring, selecting 12 employees, but could not determine if the city’s hiring practices were followed due to a lack of information.
The audit was provided to council members in January and has already spurred numerous changes regarding the use of credit cards, the budget amendment process, and hiring practices, according to Robert Fincher, city manager.
More than 25 policies have been rewritten, modified or created, he said. Many previous policies removed during the last couple of years were reinstated. The effort of reviewing old policies and comparing them to other localities to ensure best practices “has become a full-time job,” he wrote in response to the audit findings.
Paul Goldman, a member of Ferrell-Benavides’ legal team, said his client has been the victim of a “witch hunt” and stressed that the audit did not allege criminal wrongdoing.
“There is no crime. There is no fraud. There is no money missing. There is no bribery,” he said.
He said Ferrell-Benavides did not have an opportunity to respond to the audit’s findings, nor was she contacted during the review. He said not all of the credit card charges were personally connected to her.
Councilman Aaron Rawls, a critic of Ferrell-Benavides, said he was not surprised by the findings. He said he received complaints from staff about travel expenses and lack of oversight.
“It was the worst aspects of government I expected to see, and they were there,” he said.
A Virginia State Police investigation is ongoing. How or when that will end is uncertain.
Rawls welcomed the reforms instituted in the wake of the audit, but that doesn’t guarantee smooth sailing.
“The reforms, if practiced, seem to be what we need,” he said, “but they are only as good as the people in our government.”
