A former state Department of Human Services employee and her best friend were sentenced Friday to 18 months in federal prison for their admitted participation in a scheme that defrauded child-nutrition programs of $253,817.44.
Alexis Young of Bryant and Erica Warren of Little Rock, both 38-year-old mothers of young children, were ordered to report to prison by 2 p.m. Oct. 17 to begin serving the sentences for their 2016 guilty pleas to a wire-fraud conspiracy charge.
Chief U.S. District Judge Brian Miller ordered the women to jointly pay the full amount of restitution, beginning with 50 percent of all funds available to each woman while they are in prison and followed by 10 percent of each woman's gross salary upon leaving prison. The restitution will go to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, which funded state-administered programs that provided food to at-risk children.
Young worked for the state and gleaned "inside information" that allowed her and Warren to skim money from the program, they acknowledged in their guilty pleas on Feb. 26, 2016.
The women admitted that Warren operated as a "sponsor" for a feeding program through an organization she called "Write of Passage," and that part of Young's job involved approving people, including Young, as sponsors. Young was also responsible for reviewing and approving Warren's feeding sites in Little Rock.
The women admitted forming the organization as a means of fraudulently obtaining federal funds. They admitted receiving $253,817.44 from 2011 through part of 2012 by inflating the number of children Warren fed at her sites. Federal prosecutors said that after Warren received her direct-deposited federal "reimbursements" based on her false claims, she paid Young with cash or indirectly, through checks made payable to one of Young's relatives.
Young and Warren were jointly represented Friday by Little Rock attorney John Wesley Hall, who asked that both women receive the same sentence even though federal sentencing guidelines recommended 27 to 33 months for Young, as a state employee who abused a position of trust, and 21 to 27 months for Warren.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Jana Harris didn't object to sentences below the suggested range after taking into account the sentences so far imposed for several other people who have admitted participating in related schemes involving different amounts of money.
But, while acknowledging that the women readily cooperated with investigators upon being confronted in the early stages of a federal investigation, Harris objected to Hall's request that the women receive probation-only sentences, saying their crimes were serious and affected needy children.
Miller also considered Hall's argument that the amount of money stolen by the two was just above the guidelines' $250,000 threshold, placing them just barely into a higher sentencing range.
Hall also argued that Young "stopped before she was caught," after she was fired by the department for other reasons, and that Warren followed suit. Now, he said, "These women are both single moms, and their children depend on them."
Harris countered that both women were mothers at the time they committed the fraud. She said Young's son, now 8, was 2 years old, and noted that Warren even paused the fraud scheme for a few weeks while she gave birth to one of her three children. Harris also noted that Young's job was to be a "gatekeeper" to protect against fraud.
In addition, the prosecutor said, the women used the stolen money to "enrich themselves" instead of to feed their families or pay for costly emergencies. She said some of the money was used to open "a high-end boutique in a traveling truck," though Hall said the boutique wasn't actually "high end" and never made a profit.
Harris cited a 2014 article in a local publication in which the women reported being so happy with their success that they planned to buy a second truck and purchase more inventory.
Each woman briefly addressed the judge. Young told him, "There's no question we were in the wrong. There's no way to articulate our remorse," while Warren asked for forgiveness.
Miller admonished the women that their theft, which was carried out little by little over a long period of time, was "worse" than if they had just grabbed some money off a countertop once.
Wire-fraud conspiracy carries a maximum sentence of 20 years in prison and a fine of up to $250,000. Neither woman was fined because they didn't have the money to pay a fine.
Meanwhile, the joint investigation by the USDA, the FBI, the IRS and the U.S. Marshals Service remains ongoing.
Metro on 08/19/2017