Jacqueline Mills spent about four hours on the witness stand Tuesday, telling a federal jury over and over that she didn't bribe state employees to defraud the federal government, nor did she suspect that reimbursement claims she filed were made up or heavily padded.
Mills, 41, of Helena-West Helena, who said she oversaw the operation of 34 food-providing sites in Arkansas for underprivileged children between 2011 and 2014, also insisted that she never altered receipts to seek reimbursement for expenses she never incurred.
To explain away the testimony of two former state employees who said they accepted thousands of dollars in bribes from her to approve her false claims, Mills testified that the checks she wrote the women were for housewarming gifts, reimbursement for supplies they bought for her programs, and construction work that was done at her meal sites.
"If I'm guilty of anything, it's trusting people," Mills told the six men and six women who are expected to begin deliberating this afternoon on wire-fraud conspiracy charges against her and Anthony Leon Waits, 38, who is accused of taking kickbacks from people he recruited to file false reimbursement claims as part of the same scam. Mills also faces charges of bribery and money laundering.
Federal prosecutors say Mills, Waits and at least 12 other people conspired over at least a three-year period to defraud the U.S. Department of Agriculture, which funds the Child and Adult Care Feeding Program in Arkansas and other states. The program includes an after-school component for at-risk children during the school year and a summer food service program in low-income neighborhoods. The state Department of Human Services administers the Arkansas program.
In the trial that began last week and included about 50 government witnesses, Mills was the sole witness to testify on her behalf when the defense began Tuesday. Waits, who had an England address when he was arrested but grew up in Little Rock and North Little Rock, chose not to testify.
Waits' attorney called three witnesses -- an aunt, a younger brother and a nephew of Waits'. They portrayed him as a hardworking mechanic who was always broke and behind on his utility bills during the time he is accused of defrauding the government out of $1.6 million. They said he struggled to properly care for his four daughters who lived with him.
Waits' aunt pointed a finger at Waits' estranged wife, Gladys Elise Waits, one of the former state workers who testified under a plea agreement that she took bribes from Mills. The aunt said Gladys Waits always had a lot of money, but never made it available to her husband.
Tonique Hatton, the other former DHS employee who pleaded guilty and testified that she accepted bribes from Mills, was portrayed by Mills as an ungrateful friend who set Mills up to save herself.
In response to a question from her attorney, Bill James of Little Rock, Mills told jurors that a $5,000 check she wrote to Hatton wasn't a bribe but a "housewarming gift" to allow Hatton to build a fence around her house and get new gutters.
Mills said she never suspected that the reason Hatton wouldn't accept checks for $10,000 or more, and the reason Hatton made Mills reimburse her through a series of smaller checks, might be to keep banks from reporting the transactions, as the law requires.
Mills testified that while Hatton had been a close friend, Gladys Waits, who also was known as Gladys Elise King, "was just a DHS worker" whom Mills reimbursed through checks. Mills acknowledged writing a $7,500 check to Gladys Waits, but said that just part of the check was for Gladys Waits while $4,500 "was Mr. Waits' draw" for a bathroom he agreed to install at one of her sites. It was "absolutely not" a bribe, Mills said.
She also suggested that the charges against her were punishment for her relentless but unsuccessful efforts to collect $946,000 that she billed for in 2013, and that the state refused to pay after sending an audit team to her Helena-West Helena office. Mills said the audit team was called in after her secretary accidentally submitted a bill that "was off by several thousand dollars."
"I did the right thing, and that money is owed to my organization," Mills testified. As the operator of a day care in Helena, she acknowledged that she also received money from other federal programs she oversaw to benefit children.
Asked to explain the testimony of people who said they couldn't recall seeing any children at some sites Mills claimed to operate in small Arkansas towns such as Cotton Plant, Mills said she didn't operate those feeding sites out of a fixed location, but hired a man to drive a truck that served as a "mobile feeding station."
She told Assistant U.S. Attorney Jana Harris on cross-examination that the man who drove the truck in Cotton Plant, Michael Washington, couldn't testify on her behalf because he was later killed. She said she couldn't remember the names of others who drove mobile feeding stations for her because they were hired by individual site supervisors, not by her.
Mills denied doctoring receipts from suppliers to seek reimbursement for more food and milk than she had bought to feed kids. She also denied accusations that after being indicted, she asked people to lie by saying she had used their facilities to prepare food or that they had seen children at places she listed as meal sites.
U.S. District Judge James Moody Jr. has scheduled closing arguments to begin at 9 a.m. today in his Little Rock courtroom. The arguments are expected to last most of the morning.
Metro on 04/05/2017