By Ed Offley
With the Spring 2026 tourist season just four weeks away, the Panama City Beach Convention & Visitors Bureau is grappling with a fraud scandal unprecedented in its nearly three-decade history.
Following the separate arrests of two of its vice presidents for Larceny Grand Theft and Credit Card Fraud, CEO Dan Rowe announced his resignation on January 30, ending an eighteen-year tenure in which he oversaw a transformation of tourism marketing in Bay County from a narrow focus on college spring break to a year-round effort that now has an economic impact now exceeding $3 billion annually. In an emergency meeting on February 2, the board voted unanimously to accept his resignation, effective immediately.
The scandal has forced the joint board of directors of the CVB and Tourist Development Council to search for a new leader as the multiple criminal investigations by the Bay County Sheriff’s Office continue.
The scandal erupted on January 3 when Aaron Scott Lee, the Bureau’s 48-year-old Vice President of Administration, was arrested by the Bay County Sheriff’s Office (BCSO), charged with Larceny Grand Theft and five counts of Credit Card Fraud totalling $107,000.
However, a complaint affidavit released by the BCSO indicates that the total alleged theft by Lee actually amounts to nearly $900,000 in unauthorized credit card charges between April 2024 and January 1, 2026.
As of February 2, he remained incarcerated at the Bay County jail.
The CVB scandal further intensified on January 23 when Bay County Sheriff Tommy Ford announced that a second Convention & Visitors Bureau executive had been arrested on a charge of Grand Theft and 22 counts of credit card fraud. Vice President for Sales and Marketing Stephen Bailey, 53, is accused of fraudulently paying for dining and drinks for his spouse while attending out-of-state business conventions.
Bailey had been cautioned after another CVB staffer reported that he had misused his corporate credit card. The matter was apparently dropped after he agreed to repay $745.00 to cover the charges. However, after Lee’s arrest, BCSO investigators determined that there were additional false charges on Bailey’s card, including local purchases that are suspected of totalling over $5,000. The probe is continuing, BCSO spokesman Jacob Navarro said.
After the disclosure of Lee’s arrest, the nine-member board of directors of the combined Tourist Development Council and Convention & Visitors Bureau took emergency action on January 13 to strengthen its financial controls, improve transparency in its day-to-day operations, and restore public trust.
As currently structured, the CVB is one-half of a hybrid organization working in tandem with the Bay County Tourist Development Council to market tourism on Panama City Beach and elsewhere in Bay County. Both organizations are managed by the same nine-member board of directors with a single CEO. The “parent” TDC performs policy decisions and budget oversight, while the CVB acts as a non-profit corporation operating as the marketing arm implementing TDC strategies. The board consists of three elected officials, three tourist development tax collectors, and three who are employed by a tourist-related business.
Its current Chair is Clair Pease, who is also Chair of the Bay County Commission.
The board made an immediate step to unanimously pass a resolution transferring financial oversight of its $54 million annual budget to the Bay County Clerk of Court, whose office also serves as comptroller for the county’s $700 million budget.
Resolution 2601 was hastily drafted during a frenetic week of talks after Lee’s arrest between the TDC board and staff attorney Cole Davis with Clerk of Court Bill Kinsaul and his staff. “We have been working on this since Day One,” Pease said. “Days, weekends, nights.”
One section spells out the shift in responsibility from the CVB to the Clerk’s office: “The Clerk is authorized and directed to serve as the final oversight authority for all CVB expenditures.” The resolution passed unanimously.
Prior to Lee’s arrest, CVB funds were not monitored or controlled by the county, Kinsaul said. As Vice President of Administration, Lee’s primary task was managing the bureau’s financial reporting, overseeing internal CVB operations, and handling business-related expenses and credit accounts.
The BCSO complaint affidavit against Lee accuses him of making hundreds of unauthorized charges on his corporate American Express Card between April 2024 and January 1, 2026. He then deleted the transactions from the CVB’s Expensify computerized expense management system.
Kinsaul assured the CVB directors that the Clerk’s Office is capable of taking on the additional new task. “This is not just a bookkeeping office,” Kinsaul said of his organization. “We have systems and controls in place” to thwart fraudulent activities. “We pay every one of the county’s bills.”
With the BCSO investigation likely to continue for weeks, if not months, CEO Dan Rowe initially asked the board to grant him a paid leave of absence for the duration. Describing himself as “devastated” by the allegations of fraud against Lee, however, the arrest of Bailey three weeks later apparently prompted Rowe to resign.
As Chair of the combined organization, Pease will serve as interim CEO.
In a separate move, director Yonnie Patronis – while denying any “act of wrongdoing on my part” – announced he was stepping down as treasurer. The board unanimously voted for director Jeff DiBenedictus to replace him. Patronis has also said he does not intend to remain on the board after his current term ends.
The directors also announced several additional steps on January 13 to respond to the crisis:
* Attorney Davis announced the organization was preparing a massive civil lawsuit against Lee to recover as much of the missing funds as possible.
* The board has also asked the Bay County Commission to hire the Tallahassee certified public accounting firm THF (formerly Thomas Howell Ferguson) to conduct a forensic audit and recommend improved internal oversight and “best practices” measures in the management of its budget.
* Pease said that to improve the transparency of CVB operations, future CVB/TDC Board meetings will be livestreamed. Viewing will be accessible on the Bay County government website, www.baycountyfl.gov. In addition, the staff is planning to create an internet portal where the public can track all CVB programs and expenditures.
“We can get through this temporary setback,” Pease said.
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