{"id":467068,"date":"2026-10-15T19:20:07","date_gmt":"2026-10-15T19:20:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/467068\/"},"modified":"2026-10-15T19:20:07","modified_gmt":"2026-10-15T19:20:07","slug":"texas-city-employees-terminated-over-alleged-fictitious-facebook-accounts-officials-say","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/467068\/","title":{"rendered":"Texas City employees terminated over alleged &#8216;fictitious Facebook accounts,&#8217; officials say"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"EkqkG IGXmU nlgHS yuUao MvWXB TjIXL aGjvy ebVHC \">TEXAS CITY, Texas (KTRK) &#8212; Texas City officials confirm they terminated two employees over alleged fake Facebook accounts.<\/p>\n<p class=\"EkqkG IGXmU nlgHS yuUao lqtkC TjIXL aGjvy \">Jennifer Laird and Derek Miller were terminated last week after an internal investigation found they violated city policies, the city said.<\/p>\n<p class=\"EkqkG IGXmU nlgHS yuUao lqtkC TjIXL aGjvy \">&#8220;The City of Texas City can confirm that Jennifer Laird, Director of Communications, and Derek Miller, Multimedia Specialist, are no longer employed with the City. Their employment was terminated last week after an internal investigation determined that City policies were violated in connection with the creation of fictitious Facebook accounts. The City holds all employees to high standards of integrity, particularly those responsible for communicating with the public on the City&#8217;s behalf. Because this is a personnel matter, the City will not be providing further comment at this time,&#8221; the city&#8217;s statement read, in part.<\/p>\n<p class=\"EkqkG IGXmU nlgHS yuUao lqtkC TjIXL aGjvy \">Last year, ABC13 reported that Laird and Miller were accused of online impersonation.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p class=\"EkqkG IGXmU nlgHS yuUao lqtkC TjIXL aGjvy \">READ MORE: <a class=\"zZygg UbGlr iFzkS qdXbA WCDhQ DbOXS tqUtK GpWVU iJYzE \" data-testid=\"prism-linkbase\" href=\"https:\/\/abc13.com\/post\/texas-city-officials-facing-3rd-degree-felony-charges-impersonating-la-marque-councilman-according-court-records\/17804045\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" dir=\"ltr\">Second Texas City official arrested, accused of impersonating La Marque city councilman<\/a><\/p>\n<p class=\"EkqkG IGXmU nlgHS yuUao lqtkC TjIXL aGjvy \">According to court documents, <a class=\"zZygg UbGlr iFzkS qdXbA WCDhQ DbOXS tqUtK GpWVU iJYzE \" data-testid=\"prism-linkbase\" href=\"https:\/\/abc13.com\/post\/texas-city-official-arrested-accused-impersonating-la-marque-councilman-facebook\/16735629\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" dir=\"ltr\">Miller pretended<\/a> to be La Marque City Councilmember Joseph Lowry on Facebook.<\/p>\n<p class=\"EkqkG IGXmU nlgHS yuUao lqtkC TjIXL aGjvy \">Records accused Laird of exchanging texts with Miller to curate a post about Lowry.<\/p>\n<p class=\"EkqkG IGXmU nlgHS yuUao lqtkC TjIXL aGjvy \">A grand jury, however, decided not to indict Laird and Miller.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p class=\"EkqkG IGXmU nlgHS yuUao lqtkC eTIW sUzSN \">Laird&#8217;s attorney told ABC13 they would not comment on Wednesday and would follow up on Thursday.<\/p>\n<p>Copyright \u00a9 2026 KTRK-TV. All Rights Reserved.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"TEXAS CITY, Texas (KTRK) &#8212; Texas City officials confirm they terminated two employees over alleged fake Facebook accounts.&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":467069,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[158954,27,29,28],"class_list":["post-467068","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-texas","tag-158954","tag-texas","tag-texas-headlines","tag-texas-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/467068","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=467068"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/467068\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/467069"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=467068"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=467068"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=467068"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}