Monday’s announcement by the U.S. Attorney for the Middle District that Zachary businessman Michael Worley has pleaded guilty to fraud charges in connection with a scheme to illegally obtain $29 million from lenders, is a significant win for federal prosecutors.
It isn’t the only one in recent weeks. In late October, a Woodville, Mississippi man, Bruce Boulton, was sentenced to more than four years in federal prison for ripping off two well-known Baton Rouge businesses—Kleinpeter Farm’s Dairy and Angelle Concrete Group—of more than $584,000 between 2013-2018.
Just a week earlier, former hospital fundraiser John Paul Funes was sentenced to nearly three years in prison in connection with his June guilty plea of stealing more than $500,000 from the Our Lady of the Lake Regional Medical Center Foundation, which he headed for more than a decade.
Is the U.S. Attorney on bender to snag white collar criminals in Baton Rouge, or is the spate of recent guilty pleas and sentencing hearings pure coincidence?
Likely the latter, according to former U.S. Attorney Don Cazayoux, who says while the recent high-profile developments might seem to suggest a trend, it’s likely more a function of timing than anything else.
“I think it’s more happenstance than anything,” Cazayoux says. “These cases take a long time to develop so they’ve probably been in the works for a while and just came to fruition.”
Perhaps, but the cases have all moved relatively swiftly through the federal justice system, where prosecutions can often take years.
In the case of Funes, the feds began in investigating in the fall of 2018, when East Baton Rouge District Attorney Hillar Moore turned the case over to them.
Charges were not brought against Boulton until early this year and federal charges were not filed against Worley until last month.
U.S. Attorney Brandon Fremin did not return a call seeking comment on the recent cases. But Cazayoux, who served as U.S. Attorney from 2010-2013 under President Obama, says given that Fremin—who was appointed by President Trump in early 2017—has now been in office more than two years, cases that have been in the works for a while have finally come to fruition.
“There is always kind of a lull at the beginning of an administration because people are trying to get their heads around the office and where to go,” he says. “Now that it’s been a couple of years, they were able to land these investigations.”
