The owner of two contracting companies is facing jail time after pleading guilty to money laundering in the illicit deduction of recordkeeping “fees.”
Prosecutors allege Lee Ferguson, 62, president and CEO of Ferguson Electric Co. and Ferguson Mechanical Co. siphoned approximately $1.60 to $3.15 per hour from each employee’s benefits plan to cover the supposed fee, when in fact the third-party administrator, TPA of Connecticut, was a company controlled by Ferguson.
The monies were then forward to Florida-based DJS Associates, another company controlled by Ferguson, an amount that reached $3,357,516, according to the Hartford Courant, and affected over 300 employees between 2013 and 2017.
The scheme unraveled when Ferguson attempted to deposit a $75,000 check drawn in Connecticut to be deposited in Florida.
The complaint
According to the criminal complaint:
On or about June 21, 2016, in the District of Connecticut and elsewhere, FERGUSON knowingly conducted and attempted to conduct a financial transaction affecting interstate and foreign commerce, to wit, by causing TP A of Connecticut to issue a check in the amount of $75,000 in Connecticut, and causing that check to be deposited into a bank account ending in #2506 in Florida in the name of DJS Associates at Stonegate Bank, which check involved the proceeds of a specified unlawful activity, that is mail fraud, in violation of Title 18, United States Code, Section 1341, with the intent to promote the carrying on of specified unlawful activity of mail fraud, and that while conducting and attempting to conduct such financial transaction FERGUSON knew that the property involved represented the proceeds of mail fraud.
The paper notes that in June, the companies settled a class-action lawsuit by workers and former workers. The terms of that settlement were confidential.
“The crime that I pled guilty to today is the result of my own actions, and mine alone. I take full and complete responsibility,” Ferguson wrote in a statement last week.