A former employee of the St. Louis Treasurer’s Office stole almost a quarter-million dollars from a struggling charter school and enjoyed a no-show public job worth more than $175,000 in salary over five years, a federal jury in St. Louis decided Tuesday.
After two hours of deliberation, jurors convicted Fred W. Robinson, 71, of all charges. One count of wire fraud and two counts of federal program theft involved embezzlement of money from the Paideia Academy, a failed charter school. Five counts of federal program theft were related to his treasurer’s office salary from 2006-10.
Robinson showed little reaction to the verdicts, looking around and sighing once. He could face up to 20 years in prison when sentenced July 19 by U.S. District Judge Audrey G. Fleissig.
Afterward, Diane Dragan, one of his public defenders, would say only, “There will be an appeal.”
Robinson was fired from his city job a few days after newly elected Treasurer Tishaura O. Jones took office in January.
The eight-day trial shed new light on the operation of the office run for 31 years by Larry Williams, a personal friend of Robinson’s.
But it also may mark the end the investigation of Williams’ office. He was neither charged nor called as a witness by either side. Williams, a Democrat, did not seek re-election last year.
U.S. Attorney Richard G. Callahan issued a statement Tuesday that said: “No further charges are anticipated unless or until additional evidence is developed.”
In closing arguments and throughout the trial, Assistant U.S. Attorney Hal Goldsmith focused on Robinson, not the office.
“This defendant lived a life of fraud,” he told jurors, detailing Robinson’s no-show job and use of state and federal funds to buy and rehabilitate a building where he planned to open a day care center.
Prosecutors said he wanted to curry favor with the attractive bartender of a restaurant he frequented by getting her a job as the center’s director. Robinson and the friend were to collect salaries and split profits equally, according to testimony.
Goldsmith said that Robinson, chairman of Paideia’s board, at first tried to buy the proposed day care site from the city’s Land Clearance and Redevelopment Authority, but was rejected for lack of assets.
“He turned to the only bucket of money he knew,” Goldsmith said, getting the Paideia board to authorize the purchase while knowing that the school’s “ship was sinking” and that the money was “desperately needed” by students.
Robinson was quoted as telling a police officer working undercover for the FBI: “I own this school,” and, “That board really serves at my pleasure.”
He applied for a license to open the day care in a building at 4028 West Florissant Avenue but concealed that fact — and that he had an ownership interest — from board members, school administrators, state officials and the school’s sponsors, Goldsmith said.
The prosecutor said Robinson shifted money among school accounts to pay the day care contractor, working “feverishly” to finish before Paideia ran out of money. And he did it despite being told that the education funds were only to be used for kindergarten through eighth grade, Goldsmith said.
Felicia Jones, a public defender, said one board member, a longtime Robinson friend, testified that the board did know about the day care and Robinson’s role in it.
The board and school officials knew Robinson wanted to open a “feeder” day care center to reach pre-kindergarten students and improve the educational level of students entering Paideia, she said.
It never opened.
NO-SHOW JOB
Prosecutors claimed since Robinson’s indictment in 2011 that he failed to do any work for the treasurer’s office from 2006-2010, while he was earning a $35,360 yearly salary. But Goldsmith and witnesses suggested it may have gone on for much longer.
Robinson’s former supervisor, Roy White, told jurors that he had been given the job of signing off on Robinson’s time sheets in the mid- to late 1990s, when Robinson supposedly worked 40-hour weeks driving city streets looking for parking-related problems. The treasurer’s office has authority over city parking issues.
White testified that he could not verify Robinson had done the work, and said Robinson’s “reports” of a sentence or two were of little or no value. He said he raised the concerns with Williams, who told him his only duty with regard to Robinson was ensuring that his weekly hours added up to 40.
White also told the court that the first time he assigned Robinson work was a surveillance job in response to a tip about thefts from a treasurer’s office building in 1998. Robinson complained that he felt threatened by gang members and said he would not be doing any more work for him, White said. Williams’ chief of staff, Tom Stoff, then called White into the office and told him not to assign work to Robinson again, White said.
Other current or former employees of the treasurer’s office said that they were not aware of Robinson’s role, never saw him and that his reports had no value, particularly after parking operations were outsourced in 2009.
FBI Special Agent Monique Comeau testified that a GPS device put on Robinson’s car showed he spent the bulk of his time at Paideia or the day care center, or traveling to the treasurer’s office for four or five minutes twice a month to pick up his check.
Dragan, the defense lawyer, did not challenge the allegations about Robinson’s failure to work. She attacked the underlying charge, saying that Robinson did not work for any entity that received federal funds. The treasurer’s Parking Division receives funds from tickets, meters and parking lots and is a separate agency, she argued.
“There are no federal funds missing,” she insisted.
Dragan offered an alternate path to an acquittal on those charges. She told jurors that if Robinson did no work, then he was not an agent or employee of anyone. “If you believe he was not truly an employee ... then you must find him not guilty of federal program theft.”
Jurors who agreed to talk after the verdict said they had expected to hear from Williams. Attorneys on both sides declined to comment on why he was not called. But as a matter of procedure, a lawyer in federal court is not supposed to call a witness with knowledge that the person plans to assert a Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination.
Jones, the new treasurer, contacted a reporter after the verdict to emphasize that Robinson had worked for her predecessor.
“One of the first things I did here was get rid of Mr. Robinson,” she said. Asked why, she responded that his position had been eliminated. Asked what position he held, she responded, “We don’t know.”
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