The fast-paced auction, led by contracted auction house Verde Auction Co., was over in just 10 minutes, with winning bids totaling $4,269 at close.
The most coveted item of the night was an Armalite SASS .308 semi-automatic sniper rifle, valued by Verde Auction at $2,955. Like many others at the auction, undersheriff Carter, a self-described gun collector, said she was primarily interested in the sniper rifle but ended up not bidding.
“It looks like he never fired any rounds with it,” Carter noted before the auction.
Verde Auction co-owner Frank Green said that like most of the items up for auction, the firearm appeared to never have been used.
Touting its performance, Green told the crowd that “this gun was built to shoot,” which eventually led to the winning bid of $1,800.
Other high-end items included a Springfield XD-S 45 3.3-inch semi-automatic handgun, which sold for $525, and two Honda generators, which sold separately for $1,050 and $750.
“The generators look like they’ve never even had gas in them,” Green said before the auction.
Smaller items like Cronk’s Chevrolet Trailblazer performance chip and a handmade ATV platform that Cronk had built for his dog, auctioneers said, had a harder time garnering bidders’ interest.
“I know you all came down here for this (performance chip) and the dog bed,” joked auctioneer Ellis Yates, as the crowd lost interest in the remaining items and started to rise from their seats.
The performance chip eventually went for $5, and seconds before the last call for bids, the dog platform went to its only bidder, Sheriff Spruell, for $1.
Cronk’s 26-month-long embezzlement scheme began in Feb. 2011, just one month after taking office as undersheriff, during which he pilfered roughly $7,400s in taxpayer dollars for personal items including firearms, ammunition, holsters, gunsmithing services, generators and vehicle maintenance.
He was forced to resign as undersheriff in June 2013. Proceeds from the auction are to go toward Cronk’s court-ordered restitution of $7,415.
