Two employees of the V.I. Justice Department’s Paternity and Child Support Division were charged with embezzlement and fraud on Wednesday.
The unidentified employees were apprehended by the department’s Public Corruption Task Force, Attorney General Iver Stridiron said in a release Wednesday afternoon. One case concerns the alleged embezzling of an unspecified amount of child support funds, he said, and the second involves public-assistance fraud.
Justice Criminal Division chief Guy Mitchell would say only that formal charges would be filed against the two employees on Thursday.
"These charges come after an exhaustive audit and investigation of the child support accounts and the individuals who maintained them," Stridiron said. He credited Paternity and Child Support personnel and staff from the Inspector General's Office with assisting in the investigation.
"We are confident that the actions of the accused employees did not cause any child to miss any of the support provided by the parents that love and care for them," he also said.
The Public Corruption Task Force, formed by Gov. Charles W. Turnbull, has the mandate to "expose fraud wherever it exists in the Virgin Islands government, past and current," Stridiron said. The two cases "represent the results of just two of the many audits and investigations recently completed by the task force," he said, and "additional cases will be filed in the near future."
Earlier this year, Stridiron filed 14 counts of fraud, conspiracy and falsification of records against former Gov. Roy Schneider and three members of his staff for allegedly housing Walter Brunner, a non-essential government contractor, in a hotel room at Marriott's Frenchman’s Reef Beach Resort after Hurricane Marilyn in 1995. The bill for the room, which was registered under the name of Jean P. Greaux Jr., Schneider's electronic media specialist, totaled around $36,000.
Charges against all the defendants were dropped after Schneider paid the government approximately $50,000.
