Jury finds Arkansas businessman intended bribery; cash passed to state official ends in guilt on 4 counts

Ted Suhl (second from left) leaves the federal courthouse in Little Rock with family members and friends Wednesday after the verdict was announced in his bribery trial.
Ted Suhl (second from left) leaves the federal courthouse in Little Rock with family members and friends Wednesday after the verdict was announced in his bribery trial.

A federal jury deliberated about five hours Wednesday before finding northeast Arkansas businessman Ted Suhl guilty on four of six charges accusing him of paying bribes over four years to keep a state regulatory official "on retainer" to benefit his companies.

Due for sentencing in about three months, Suhl, 51, faces up to 30 years in prison on each of his two convictions for honest services wire fraud. He also faces up to 20 years in prison for his conviction on a charge of interstate travel in aid of bribery and up to 10 years for bribery involving federal program funds.

The verdict was announced a few minutes before 5 p.m., and shortly after that, Suhl walked silently past reporters standing outside the federal courts building in Little Rock, ignoring questions. He was surrounded by several people, at least some of whom were family members, who formed a protective semicircle around him, as they did when he walked past reporters on his first day of trial one week earlier.

His defense attorneys also refused to speak to reporters but told the judge in the courtroom that they plan to file a motion for a new trial. U.S. District Judge Billy Roy Wilson gave them until noon Aug. 22 and gave prosecutors with the U.S. Department of Justice until noon Sept. 20 to respond.

A jury of six men and six women acquitted Suhl of conspiracy to commit bribery, as well as one of three charges of honest services wire fraud that he faced. That charge concerned a $2,000 check he wrote on Sept. 9, 2010, to the 15th Street Church of God in Christ in West Memphis on the account of one of his Florida-based companies, Millenia. The other two wire-fraud charges concerned checks written on Aug. 16, 2010, and on Sept. 12, 2011.

They were among 13 checks prosecutors said he wrote between April 2007 and Sept. 11, 2011, to the church, intending the church to keep half and the rest to be distributed in cash to Steven B. Jones, then the deputy director of the state Department of Human Services. Individual wire-fraud charges were applied to only three of the checks, which were considered examples of the 13 checks that created an overall pattern.

Jones oversaw five divisions at the state's largest agency, including one that regulates providers of behavioral health services for youths, the line of business of Suhl's two Arkansas companies. The companies received more than $125 million in state-administered Medicaid funds during that period, but the state discontinued Medicaid funding to both companies in 2014 after Jones pleaded guilty on Oct. 2 of that year to conspiracy and federal funds bribery charges.

Medicaid is a program to help the poor and disabled and is supported by taxpayer funds -- about 70 percent from the federal government and 30 percent from the state.

In his guilty plea, Jones admitted taking between $10,000 and $20,000 in cash that he believed came from Suhl during the four-year period. But in his testimony at Suhl's trial on Monday, Jones, 51, questioned whether he had really accepted bribes and should have pleaded guilty, noting that he never actually did any substantive favors for Suhl.

He acknowledged, however, that he tried to create the impression for Suhl that he was looking into various concerns and requests and keeping an eye out for inside information that might affect Suhl's businesses, so that he would keep receiving the money that was transferred through a middleman.

Phillip Wayne Carter of West Memphis, who, like Jones, is in federal prison after pleading guilty in the case, testified that he was the middleman. He told jurors that Suhl intended part of the checks he wrote to the church to make their way to Jones, and that Jones understood that the cash was Suhl's way of paying him to be a silent supporter of Suhl's within the department.

In closing arguments Wednesday morning, Amanda Vaughn, one of three assistant U.S. attorneys from Washington, D.C., told jurors to use their common sense in interpreting the three men's actions that were captured on a Memphis restaurant camera on Sept. 11, 2011, and telephone conversations that were captured on FBI wiretaps.

None of the calls were between Suhl and Jones, but there were numerous calls between Suhl and Carter, and Carter and Jones, as Carter arranged meetings among all three men on several occasions.

Vaughn told jurors to keep in mind that the meetings, usually on Sundays at the pricey Texas de Brazil restaurant in Memphis, which Jones said was his favorite restaurant, always occurred a matter of days after Suhl wrote a check on the account of his Millenia business to the church. She said it was important to note that "the Millenia check was never deposited until after the meeting at the Texas de Brazil," where Suhl discussed his concerns about departmental matters that affected his businesses, and Jones listened.

Video footage from the restaurant on the evening of Sept. 11, 2011, shows Jones getting up from the table and walking away after eating dinner, and then Suhl getting up, walking over to Carter's chair and leaning down, slipping him a check that Carter placed in his sock.

In his testimony, Suhl explained that the reason he waited until after Jones left the table to slip the check to Carter was that he believed in making donations anonymously, because the Bible says he will get his reward later in Heaven.

"Look how close he gets to him," Vaughn said, pointing to the video. "This is one of those moments where your common sense comes in. Why does he pass the check that way? It's not because he wants to make an anonymous donation."

If that would have been the case, she said, Suhl could have handed the check to Carter when he picked him up and drove him to the restaurant to meet Jones.

The video shows that after tucking the check into his sock, Carter got up from the table and talked into his cellphone. A recording of that call, played to jurors, reveals that he called the church pastor, John Bennett, to exclaim that it was a "good day" for them financially. Carter told jurors that he and Bennett planned to keep all the cash from that meeting, rather than pass any on to Jones, because Jones didn't seem to be doing much for the money.

Carter testified that Bennett, who died in 2014, regularly deposited the checks into the church's main account, then got cash for half that amount from a church day care account operated by his wife and gave it to Carter, who in turn usually gave some to Jones.

Rob Cary, a Washington, D.C.-based attorney for Suhl, suggested Vaughn was being melodramatic.

Referring to the FBI, which investigated the case, Cary told jurors, "They look at everything through a lens of corruption and cynicism when, in fact, sometimes a check to a church is really just a check to a church."

Vaughn, who prosecuted the case with two other attorneys from the Justice Department, John Keller and Lauren Bell, told jurors to look past Suhl's history of giving more than $100,000 in donations to the church over several years.

"Who was gonna notice when he sprinkled some bribe payments in there, too?" she asked. "Everyone knew what these checks were really for. ... We know the church was the cover."

She said the checks from which Jones received a share were assurance for Suhl that "when he needed something, Steven Jones would be there."

Cary called Suhl "a generous man, an unapologetic evangelical Christian." He looked directly at jurors, one of whom wore a cross necklace each day of the trial, as he added, "Charity should not be a crime."

A Section on 07/21/2016

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