Former security officer at federal building in downtown Little Rock sentenced in child-meal fraud

2½ years given; judge puzzled by ‘out of character’ crime

A former security officer at the federal administration building in downtown Little Rock was sentenced Tuesday to 2½ years in prison for conspiring to defraud the federal government of $575,917.76.

Maria Carmen Nelson, 50, was sentenced in a courtroom of the federal courthouse, next door to the administrative building where she was working in uniform on Sept. 11, 2015, when arrested on wire-fraud charges. Her job with a security company that protects the federal building also required her to patrol the courthouse grounds.

At Nelson's sentencing hearing Tuesday before U.S. District Judge Leon Holmes, Assistant U.S. Attorney Jana Harris argued that the position of authority she held at the time of her arrest should subject her to a steeper sentence.

Nelson's attorney, Garry Corrothers of Little Rock, countered that the fraud Nelson committed by submitting inflated reimbursement requests for providing meals to impoverished children over three years wasn't representative of the life she has otherwise led. In a sentencing memorandum, he said she had overcome a "troubled childhood" that began when she was born in the Dominican Republic. He said her "housemaid mother" let her be adopted at age 5 by a couple who brought her to the United States, where she was eventually placed in foster care in Mississippi.

Corrothers said that before working as an armed contract security officer for Quality Investigations Security from Aug. 1, 2014 through Sept. 11, 2015, Nelson "had worked steadily in the security and corrections field since 2000." That included working as a Pulaski County jailer, a security officer at Arkansas Children's Hospital, a security major at Superior Protection Service and a prison guard at the Arkansas Department of Correction.

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Nelson is the fifth person to be sentenced in the scheme to fraudulently obtain U.S. Department of Agriculture funds designated to feed impoverished children. She was indicted on one count of wire fraud conspiracy and 20 individual counts of wire fraud -- one for each fraudulent claim she submitted for reimbursement between March 2012 and September 2014. However, she pleaded guilty Aug. 25 to the conspiracy charge in exchange for the other charges being dropped.

Harris told Holmes at the plea hearing that Nelson was recruited to participate in the scheme by a former employee of the state Department of Human Services, which was the administrator for the USDA's feeding program. Harris said Nelson and the unidentified state employee both intended to defraud the program.

Harris said that Nelson planned her involvement, setting up an organization she called Securing Our Future and renting feeding locations in Little Rock and Malvern. While no more than 20 children were ever seen at either location, Nelson later claimed reimbursements for feeding as many as 450 children at a time, Harris said.

Through the scheme, Nelson received $575,917.76 from the USDA through direct deposits into her checking account, Harris said, noting Tuesday that it was "a very significant amount of money" from a program intended to help hungry children.

Under federal sentencing guidelines, Nelson faced a range of 27 to 33 months in prison, and Harris told the judge that she thought a 33-month sentence would "reflect the seriousness of the offense." Full restitution is mandatory.

"The situation we have here is something that always puzzles me," Holmes said, referring to cases in which "a law-abiding citizen for many years" takes advantage of an opportunity to commit an act of dishonesty that "seems so totally out of character."

He agreed with Harris that Nelson should be punished for an offense that involved "numerous acts of dishonesty," as opposed to a one-time event, and that defrauded the government and "children who didn't have any resources" of more than half a million dollars. But he said he also agreed with Corrothers that there is no need to protect the public from further crimes, as he believes Nelson won't commit any further crimes.

Also taking into consideration other sentences imposed as a result of various indictments stemming from the same scheme, Holmes set Nelson's punishment in the middle of the recommended range. He ordered her to undergo mental health counseling, and to participate in educational and vocational programs while in prison, and then to serve two years of supervised release.

Seven people have pleaded guilty in the wide-ranging feeding fraud scheme and are awaiting sentencing. Meanwhile, three people -- Jacqueline Mills, Dortha Harper and Anthony Waits -- are scheduled for a jury trial on March 27 before U.S. District Judge James Moody.

An investigation is still under way by the USDA-Office of Inspector General, the FBI, the IRS-Criminal Investigations and the U.S. Marshals Service. Anyone with information about any fraudulent activity regarding feeding programs is urged to email the information to USAARE.FeedingProgramFraud@usdoj.gov.

Metro on 02/01/2017

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