Former Homer Housing Authority Director and Five Others Sentenced for Theft of Public Money
SHREVEPORT, LA—United States Attorney Stephanie A. Finley announced today that former Homer Housing Authority (HHA) Executive Director Michelle Green, 35, of North Little Rock, Arkansas, and five co-defendants were sentenced before U.S. District Judge Elizabeth E. Foote for defrauding the HHA out of $430,000.
Green was sentenced to 37 months in prison and three years of supervised release and was ordered to pay $430,000 in restitution to the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD).
Green pleaded guilty October 29, 2012 to causing checks to be issued to friends and relatives for work allegedly performed for HHA. The defendants admitted they did no work for HHA and that they usually cashed the checks and returned much of the proceeds to Green. More than $430,000 worth of checks were written between December 2007 until Green was fired in April 2011. Green and five co-defendants were indicted in July 2012.
Co-defendant Curtis L. Mays, 34, of Harker Heights, Texas, was sentenced to probation and five years of supervised release and was ordered to pay $26,176 in restitution.
Katrina G. Robertson, 38, of Haynesville, Louisiana, received probation, five years’ supervised release, and $26,176 in restitution.
Flack D. Robertson, 35, of Haynesville, Louisiana, was sentenced to probation, five years’ supervised release, and $50,190 in restitution.
Aaron Perry, 29, of Haynesville, Louisiana, received probation, three years’ supervised release, and $20,630 in restitution.
Katrina Henderson, 34, of Shreveport, received probation, three years of supervised release, and $15,380 in restitution.
“The victims in this case are the Homer Housing Authority and the citizens of Homer, Louisiana. The defendants sought to enrich themselves at the expense of the residents who could potentially qualify and are in need of low-income housing opportunities,” Finley said. “The citizens of this community lose when criminals steal from programs like this. Our office will continue to investigate and prosecute anyone who violates the public trust in this manner.”
The Housing and Urban Development-Office of Inspector General and the FBI investigated the case. Senior Litigation Counsel Joseph G. Jarzabek prosecuted the case.
02/14/2013 at 2:06 pm |
Someone like that should have their picture plastered all over the news.
02/15/2013 at 9:52 am |
along with elected offiicials and their staff……
02/14/2013 at 2:11 pm |
What in the world is happening? Check the water supply….greed is being spread by the water, I do declare!
All the young folks want to get rich off of NOT working.
Happy the feds are on it…..maybe when they finish in Homer, they can come on over to Jonesboro.
02/14/2013 at 2:16 pm |
Check on the FBI website….lots of greedy folks….some get caught, some do not….me thinks they are looking at the grant writers in Jackson Parish…..hope the paper trail is a good one!
02/14/2013 at 6:46 pm |
All the agencies like Housing Authorities need to be checked and recheck. This is nothing but a hole for money to flow. Look at the pay that some of the people in charge of these places make. I think the woman over the J-boro Housing Authority makes like $70k plus has a car. Almost as crazy as the mayor of J-boro making $70 k or the Simmons group employing all of their family with each making 40 plus, all from spending our money that Alexander gave them. This is how our government works, waste, fraud and abuse all stealing from us the taxpayers. We need to demand that they get government under control, kick the bums out and start over. Driving around Bossier City, I often wonder just how many vehicles does the city own and why does everyone working for the gov need a car of their own. Oh wait, many of them don’t have cars but have very nice SUVs to roll around all the time in. You’ll see all the cops driving their vehicles out of uniform, so this is their off time, yet we pay for their gas and wear & tear for all that extra driving. Government for the government workers and politicians paid for by the taxpayers.
02/15/2013 at 8:37 am |
The woman over Jonesboro has been there over 30 plus years. She started by cutting the grass, i dare you to compare her with the mayor.Do some research before you go off.
02/15/2013 at 9:32 am |
The woman over the Jonesboro Housing Authority is a good woman and works very hard to make sure that she and her staff are accountable for everything that takes place under her authority. Please don’t compare her with anyone currently at the Town of Jonesboro, that is so comparable to the mayor and his followers saying everything that has transpired under his authority is a racial issue.
Fortunately, we are not all alike, so climb back off of her and put your effort toward trying to expose all the other public trust abusers and tax dollar users.
02/17/2013 at 12:24 am |
The woman at the Jonesboro housing authority might be a very nice lady as I don’t know her, but my point is that someone in a job like that should not be making 70k. This is what is wrong with the government, way too many people making way too much money. Plus why does she need a car paid for by the government? Let her keep her mileage records and claim actual cost for driving, don’t just give her a new drive every few years.
02/17/2013 at 4:21 am |
Amen
02/17/2013 at 12:25 pm |
First of all she doesn’t drive the company car unlFiredess its at work.The black car she drives is her personal car and for you that don’t know the company car is a blue PT Cruiser.So start asking questions before you speak out on someone.All black people are not alike just like all white aren’t the same.Tired of paying taxes
02/17/2013 at 6:57 pm |
omg really, who cares what color she is?? i think tired of paying taxes made a valid point that the job shouldn’t be paying 70K a year and a company car!!!!!!
02/17/2013 at 9:07 pm |
If you could read you would realize that there was no mention of her race. Its was the car that she owns.And if you would also do the research you would find out why she makes as much as she does.Really think you would be surprise, she pays taxes to. Living the American Dream
02/18/2013 at 7:27 pm |
As someone said below, I made no mention of her being black or white as I don’t know what color she is, but apparently you are like the president and the J-boro mayor and think everyone that disagrees with politicians (government workers) is racist, right! Now on to your point about the car, great if she only drives the government car for business, my point is that she doesn’t need one at all, just like the thousands of government officials/workers throughout Louisiana that have gov cars, yet don’t need them. This cost the city/parish/state hundreds of millions a year, money that I pay in taxes. If these people drive their own cars, they can get reimbursed, as long that they keep up with their mileage, no big deal, but it definitely saves tax dollars. As for someones point that she pays taxes, well I hope so, but that still isn’t a reason to have an elevated salary, does it? How many units does she manage and how many people does she oversea? I would venture to say that apartment managers in Jackson Parish don’t make 70K. Government workers should get no more than the median income of private citizens in their area. This is why our government is so out of wack, many (not all) of government jobs, especially federal and state, are overpaid tremendously. This doesn’t even consider the outrageous benefit packages that most gov employees get, like lifetime healthcare and lifetime retirement. Almost no private employees get such sweet deals, so why should government workers. Now back to Director of Housing for Jackson Parish, I wasn’t personally attacking this women as I am sure she is a nice lady and I am not doubting that she works hard, I only wanted to point out the insanity of our governments, all of them. Too often too few of those in power care about the people that pay the taxes to fund all these programs and employees. We need to get back to providing only needed services and not allow people to live an easy life off our $$$. This goes for the overpaid and excessive numbers of government employees. In the vast majority of cases, private businesses can provide the same or better services for much less money, mostly because they pay market rate for employees and don’t hand out excessive benefits, unlike our governments often do. If we don’t change our ways, the ways of our governments, we will all be taxed to poverty, with only government workers living the good life. Is that what you want? Not me, Take care of only those that can’t care for themselves. I remember when those housing units in J-boro were only for the elderly that lived off social security, most of who had worked all their adult lives, paying taxes and ssi. Now we hand benefits to anyone that shows up at the door. Illegals, the able bodied, the program cheats, drug addicts, etc are handed freebies when other people that actually deserve this help are frozen out of the system because the pot is empty after being raided by the Do Nothings.
02/17/2013 at 10:38 am |
Makes sense to me.
02/17/2013 at 7:39 pm |
It’s not in the water; it’s in the human heart: all sorts of evil, malice, greed, envy, selfishness. All the morality and values training of centuries has managed to somehow hold back a tsunami of evil long enough to allow society to develop some order out of the chaos, and now the spolied children of rich people hang Che posters on the walls of their suburban bedrooms and Ivy League dorm rooms and they are bent on destroying all the institutions of society. Basicallyt hey are kicking the props out from under civilization and replacing them with: hot air. They have no idea what they are releasing nor how bad the consequences will be.
02/17/2013 at 9:35 pm |
Who is this woman has she broken any laws are even failed any audit’s?
02/19/2013 at 11:07 am |
Forget the lady in Jonesboro, this article is about the woman in Homer who Stole $430,000 of taxpayers’ money. Convicted and sentenced.
02/19/2013 at 7:00 pm |
Yes, this article was about the woman in Homer convicted of stealing money, but these things happen over and over as there is very little to no oversight of politicians and government workers. Everything comes down to the fact that our government local/state/federal is broken and needs to be cleaned up and reworked. We pay too much taxes and get far too little in return for our money. I pointed out the J-boro Housing Auth director’s salery was just to make a point about how overpaid government employees are in many cases, not all but many. Unfortunately the people that often do most of the work in our government are often the ones paid the least. Government is top heavy and prone to corruption. What private company will give promotions to employees in order to allow them to retire at a higher pay??? The government agencies often do this in many different ways. What private companies give promotions based on time in the job, not performance? BTW, I mean private companies not saddled with union rules, which also goes on the time, not performance promotion strategy like the government does. Government workers all and all have the best benefits, the best retirements, the protection from firings and/or layoffs and the ability to be a career poor employee that never fears for his/her job. These benefits used to make up for the lower pay many government jobs had in the past, but over the last 10-15 years government pay has passed private sector pay for the same job, while maintaining all the great perks of working for the government. We can no longer afford giving lifetime retirement after as little as 15 years work. We can no longer afford having the government pay for all their workers retirement (or the majority of it), while private employees pay for their own retirement. We can no longer afford to have 10 people doing the same amount of work that 1 person in the private world do. We can no longer allow free cars for many government workers. Us, the taxpaying public needs to wake up and realize that we are busting our asses to pay for all the sweet deals and in the years to come we will be taxed higher and higher to keep these deals in place. We shouldn’t be handing out money to groups like the Simmons family charity in Jonesboro as we don’t need to keep the whole dang family employeed at taxpayer expense. We have thousands and thousands of programs and grants, so many that no one really knows how much money is going to whom and for what. Government is broken and we, the taxpayers should demand that it be fixed or maybe we should all stop working too, let the government scramble for tax money when all of us workers go on strike and apply for freebies like everyone else.