photo by: Richard Gwin

Lawrence Mayor Jeremy Farmer looks to the crowd at a City Commission meeting, April 14, 2015, at City Hall.

Federal investigations into alleged wrongdoing at a Lawrence food pantry where ex-Mayor Jeremy Farmer was executive director are continuing, an attorney for the pantry’s board of directors said this week.

It has been almost a year since the news first surfaced that the former mayor had failed to pay about $50,000 in payroll taxes while he was in charge of the nonprofit pantry Just Food. Farmer resigned from Just Food on Aug. 10, 2015, and days later also resigned as the city’s mayor.

The food bank’s board later alleged that Farmer had overpaid himself by more than $52,000 over a two-year period and had deceived the board on a number of financial matters.

On Thursday, Dan Watkins, the board’s attorney, said investigations by federal agencies including the IRS “can take awhile.”

Will Katz, the new board president of Just Food, said the board would still seek restitution but was waiting for other investigations to play out.

“It is a complex process, and we have to wait for other factors,” Katz said. “I can assure you that it is not forgotten. It is hard to imagine that there won’t be some consequences somewhere.”

Farmer, contacted by telephone Thursday by the Journal-World, declined to comment.

Michael T. Devine, an IRS spokesman in St. Louis, said he could not confirm or deny any investigations by the IRS unless they are filed in court.

For months after the allegations broke, Farmer’s whereabouts were unknown. He had moved out of his Lawrence rental home and did not return phone calls.

Then in November of last year, he resurfaced in a district courtroom in St. Joseph, Mo., with a woman he was dating at the time, Amanda Comeau, who was in the midst of a child custody dispute.

Farmer had been subpoenaed to testify as a witness in that case, and during a deposition he said he was doing consulting work in the Kansas City area.

Comeau was the woman whom Farmer, while still mayor, had paid a portion of an airline ticket for using a city-issued credit card in July, just a couple weeks before the public learned about the Just Food problem. Comeau had traveled from Washington, D.C., to Kansas City the same day as Farmer did. Farmer was in Washington to attend a conference hosted by the Young Elected Officials Network.

Readers have recently contacted the Journal-World to provide documentation that Farmer has been going by a different last name, James, which is actually his middle name. And it appears Farmer has created a Facebook page using the name “Jeremy James.” The page, which includes the username “Jeremy Farmer” in the URL, lists a number of his family members as friends.

Meanwhile Just Food is recovering from its financial losses with the help of Lawrence residents, Katz said.

At the recent Kansas Food Truck Festival in May, almost 4,000 tickets were sold, he said.

“We are really happy the community stepped up,” Katz said. “We have worked really hard to turn this into a positive.”