Former Richmond public works official gets 27-month prison sentence in fraud case

The Richmond City Hall building. (BizSense file)

A former senior manager with Richmond’s public works department will serve more than two years in prison for his role in a yearslong scheme that defrauded the city of over $600,000 in department contracts.

Michael Evins, 67, was sentenced Tuesday in federal court to 27 months in prison and three years of supervised released after pleading guilty in July to conspiring to use his position to steer department contracts to straw companies created by at least three co-conspirators, including his wife, Samaria Evins.

Samaria, 52, also was sentenced Tuesday and received eight months’ home confinement and five years of probation.

A second co-conspirator, Shaun Lindsey, a former senior administrative technician with the department, is scheduled for sentencing next week after entering a plea deal in May. Lindsey faces the same maximum penalties as Michael Evins did, including up to 20 years in prison.

Michael Evins’ sentence was at the low end of sentencing guidelines, based on a joint recommendation of the attorneys involved and due to Evins accepting responsibility for his actions.

Addressing U.S. District Judge M. Hannah Lauck before she handed down her sentence, Evins said: “Your honor, I take full responsibility for my actions. Thank you.”

According to court filings, the Evinses’ fraud took place from at least 2016 through 2021, during which time Samaria, Lindsey and co-conspirators including Lindsey’s boyfriend, who is not identified, created straw companies to bid on department contracts.

Michael Evins and Lindsey, the filings state, then used their positions in the department to direct work to those companies, in violation of city and state rules against self-dealing by public employees.

In one instance, in early 2019, Michael awarded lawn mowing work that already had been performed at the city’s Parker Field to a company owned by Samaria, ordering the area to be mowed 16 times in four days at a cost of $300 per job or a total of $4,800, just below the department’s $5,000 procurement threshold for work to be competitively bid.

The release states that the Evinses, Lindsey and their co-conspirators fraudulently caused the department to disburse over $603,000 to companies owned by them, resulting in over $226,000 in losses to the department.

The federal courthouse in Richmond. (BizSense file)

In sentencing Michael Evins, Lauck ordered him to pay over $226,000 in restitution to the City of Richmond Department of Public Works, to be paid in installments of at least $50 a month, as well as forfeiture of assets totaling $40,000.

Lauck granted a request to delay the start of Evins’ prison term for two months to allow him time to heal from a recent surgery. Evins is due to report to prison in Florida, where he now resides, on Jan. 9, 2024.

In recommending the sentence, Assistant U.S. Attorney Avi Panth described Michael Evins as “the most culpable” of the group, adding that, “He of all people knew better” as manager of a staff of 60 people at the time. Noting the number of years that the scheme took place, Panth argued that Evins’s actions was not an isolated loss of judgment but “a deliberate and calculated set of events.”

“The government needs to send a serious message, and that is done with a custodial sentence of 27 months,” he told the judge.

Evins’s counsel, local attorney Anthony White, described Evins as “a good person making bad decisions” and noted his upbringing in a “tough” neighborhood in Pittsburgh and ascendance in his career without a high school diploma, rising to a managerial position where most of his contemporaries had college degrees.

“This is not who he really is,” White said.

In addressing Evins before delivering her sentence, Lauck also noted the length of time that the fraud was committed and chided Evins for stealing money from the government he worked for. Doing so, she said, broke a code of public servants, as well as the public’s trust in government.

“It is clear you were succeeding, and remarkably so,” Lauck said, adding that she was at a loss at how “so many years went by with such an elaborate scheme” without Evins putting a stop to it.

“You were the driving force in the fraudulent scheme and directed others,” Lauck said. “The notion of your being in a position of trust is especially worrisome.”

Describing most public servants, including herself and those she’s worked with, as taking their jobs as a calling to serve the greater good, Lauck added, “As an employee of government, you can’t steal from the government.”

“As I said to your wife, you cannot put the government in the position of being something people can’t trust,” Lauck said. Of their actions, she added, “It is a significant breach of trust.”

In encouraging Evins to make his monthly restitution payments, Lauck told him to pretend there’s some 8-year-old kid who he’s helping with each one.

“The city needs the money,” she said.