April 27, 2001 — Alec Dizon, the former director of the V.I. Lottery, pleaded guilty Thursday in federal court to bilking the government out of $82,000.
Dizon, 36, the Lottery director in the Schneider administration, was arraigned and entered a guilty plea to federal wire fraud charges before St. Thomas District Court Judge Thomas Moore. According to a release from U.S. Attorney David Atkinson, Dizon admitted that between February 1996 and Feb. 1, 1999, he made $82,000 worth of unauthorized expenditures that were paid for with V.I. government money.
According to Atkinson, Dizon opened a Merrill Lynch Working Capital Management Account funded with money from the V.I. Lottery. Dizon then obtained a Visa charge card for the account, which he used to make $82,000 worth of personal expenditures.
The investigation of Dizon is one of several cases of government corruption that federal and territorial prosecutors have undertaken over the last year and a half. In addition to prosecuting former Gov. Roy L. Schneider for misuse of government funds following Hurricane Marilyn in 1995, which ended in Schneider reimbursing the government, the V.I. Department of Justice has gone after former acting Health Commissioner Dr. Lucien Moolenaar II for embezzlement, embezzlers in its own Paternity and Child Support Division, a Finance Department employee for allegedly pilfering computers, and a cop from New York who investigators say was posing as an attorney.
Ann Abramson, a former Public Works commissioner and prominent St. Croix businesswoman, was sentenced last year to a 2-1/2-year prison term for making false claims and false statements in connection with Federal Emergency Management Agency funds.
Dizon pleaded guilty to one count of wire fraud, which carries a maximum of five years in prison and a $250,000 fine or both. A sentencing date has not been set. Dizon was released Thursday on a $100,000 unsecured bond pending the sentencing, Atkinson said.
The U.S. Department of Interior's Office of Inspector General and its V.I.-based auditors uncovered the unauthorized expenditures made by Dizon, Atkinson said.
