The North Carolina Town of 63 That Voted Itself Out of Existence

The North Carolina Office of the State Auditor's investigative report⧉ on the Town of Speed -- population approximately 63, in Edgecombe County -- opens with a complaint: that the Town failed to maintain accurate financial records or exercise proper oversight of its funds.▸ It closes with the Town voting to cease to exist. In between, investigators traced $3,507.15 in charges that drained the Town's checking and money-market accounts between May 2024 and February 2025 -- gift cards, frozen dinners, dish soap, a prepaid smartphone -- without a single Town official noticing for months. The Town's own bank statements had been quietly rerouted to an unidentified address in Texas. OSA subpoenaed the bank and Walmart, Inc. directly, referred the matter to the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Eastern District of North Carolina, and concluded Speed had "fell victim to a common foreign scam."

Investigators found the Town's Business Checking Account statements for July, August, and September 2024 were mailed, without the Town Clerk's knowledge, to an address in Texas with no known affiliation to Speed.▸ The Clerk got October and November's statements redirected to the Town's own P.O. box -- then December's went back to the same Texas address anyway. While that was happening, unauthorized ACH charges were hitting the Town's Money Market Account almost every month: $413.76 in July (two $200 gift cards plus a fee), $329.83 across nine transactions in August, none logged in September, $363.85 in October, a peak of $1,174.29 across nine transactions in November, $826.20 in December, and a final $288.90 in late January before the Clerk caught on and reported the charges as fraud.

Separately, $110.32 moved out of the Checking Account in late January 2025.▸ Combined, the two accounts lost $3,507.15 -- equal to roughly $55.67 for each of the Town's 63 residents, though the money came out of Town operating funds, not resident pockets directly. On January 31, 2025, the bank refunded $1,115.10; the audit says OSA "was unable to confirm why the total amount of unauthorized purchases was not refunded," leaving an unreimbursed remainder of roughly $2,392.05. Separately, OSA found the Town's accounts fended off 33 attempted unauthorized transactions between July 2024 and January 2025 -- 20 went through on taxpayer funds, the rest Walmart.com declined, including a $1,599 attempted purchase of an iPhone 15 Pro Max that never processed.

The fraud wasn't the only finding.▸ N.C.G.S. Sec. 159-34⧉ requires every North Carolina local-government unit to have its accounts independently audited each fiscal year and to file that audit with the state's Local Government Commission (LGC). As of September 11, 2025, Speed's last filed Annual Audit Report was for fiscal year 2021 -- meaning the audits for FY2022, FY2023, and FY2024 simply never arrived. In December 2024, the LGC had already voted to intervene⧉, directing Speed to contract with a public accountant to help fulfill its finance officer's duties and warning that noncompliance could mean the LGC taking over the Town's finances outright, or the dissolution of its charter. The Town retained an accountant to help file quarterly reports -- but by OSA's site visit nearly a year later, the outstanding audits still hadn't been filed.

OSA's review of Speed's meeting records for January 2024 through September 2025 found only minutes from a single July 2024 meeting and an agenda for one November 2024 meeting -- the Town Clerk could produce nothing else and told investigators 2025's minutes hadn't yet been written.▸ North Carolina's Open Meetings Law requires public bodies to keep "full and accurate" minutes of official business; OSA found Speed in violation. Board compensation told a similar story of records without a rationale: commissioners were each paid a flat $576 a year, the Mayor and Town Clerk $2,770.44 each, on an irregular schedule -- and per the audit, the Town Clerk could not explain how any of those figures were set, and OSA found no formula behind them.

Speed's Town Hall -- a former Ruritan Club building deeded to the Town in 2023 -- absorbed $23,603.25 in repairs between May 2023 and August 2024: a new roof and locks, plumbing, paint, a window replacement.▸ When OSA investigators visited in September 2025, the building still appeared to be in a state of disrepair. It is one of five Town-owned properties in Speed; the other four are vacant land or abandoned structures, according to Edgecombe County's own property records.

By August 2024, the LGC had already recommended Speed consider dissolving outright; the Board declined at the time.▸ In August and September 2025, the North Carolina League of Municipalities made the same recommendation. In September 2025, the Town received a draft of OSA's investigative report. The following month, Speed's Board adopted a Resolution of Intent to Administratively Dissolve⧉ the Town's charter under N.C.G.S. Sec. 160A-860 -- the state law governing how a city or town winds itself down. That resolution gives Speed until June 30, 2026 to disband. The report's own transmittal letter ties the collapse to a disaster more than a generation old: Edgecombe County still marks Hurricane Floyd, the 1999 storm that caused $6 billion in damage statewide, with a historical marker ten minutes' drive from Speed's Town Hall. "The Town of Speed, like too many other communities," the State Auditor writes, "never fully recovered."