Riley Appointee M. William "Bill" Campbell, Jr. Indicted on $7.3 Million Theft of Alabama State Funds

"Riley's Boys" Former ADEM Director Glenn (L) & Bill "Sir William" Campbell Summer 2008

Guilty verdict returned Nov. 17th on all 96 counts
FBI release

**Follow up story posted April 12, 2011 


April 1, 2011 FBI Press Release:

BIRMINGHAM—A federal fraud, money laundering, and conspiracy indictment was unsealed today against the former state director of a college consortium of business development centers, announced U.S. Attorney Joyce White Vance, FBI Special Agent in Charge Pat Maley, and IRS Criminal Investigation Special Agent In Charge Reginael D. McDaniel.

The 96-count indictment, returned March 30, charges MAURICE WILLIAM CAMPBELL  JR., 59, of Rainbow City, with using his position as state director of the Alabama Small Business Development Consortium to obtain more than $7 million from the State of Alabama.

The indictment charges Campbell with conspiracy to defraud the state and a private non-profit institute he incorporated, and to make financial transactions intended to conceal the proceeds of the fraud. The indictment also charges Campbell with three counts of mail fraud, 56 counts of wire fraud, and 36 counts of money laundering. It also provides notice that the United States will seek forfeiture of $7,326,569.

About February 2005, Campbell incorporated the Alabama Small Business Institute of Commerce. Campbell was the president, a director, the initial registered agent, and the incorporator of the institute. The stated purpose of the institute was to enhance economic development, increase employment, and reduce business failure in Alabama through business education and workforce training.

The institute was formed as a nonprofit, with the representation that the corporation would not be operated for private profit, nor its assets at any time be used to benefit any shareholder, member, director, trustee, officer or other private person. The institute was expressly organized as a private, non-profit, charitable organization.

The institute received nearly all of its funding from the state through grants, contracts, and appropriations in the education budget. From 2005 through 2010, the private nonprofit Institute received more than $7.3 million in public funds to, among other services, provide education and training to Alabama workers.

The indictment charges that Campbell and others used the state funds provided to the Institute for personal gain through a variety of means, including the use of the mails and wires. The indictment further charges that Campbell and others created a number of other entities—into which state funds provided to the Institute were deposited and later spent—in order to conceal the source, ownership, and control of those funds.

There's more to the story of the ASBDC and we're seeing once again the bad behavior of "Riley boys" looting the state coffers and violating the trust of Alabama's citizens. Glenn had to resign his post as ADEM Director amid controversy and Mr. Campbell, well, we see what he's been doing don't we? At least we are seeing some of it, but we'll probably never know the whole story.

What we do know is that are too many quasi-governmental agencies in place whose duties seem to overlap each other and positions are created to put as many porkers at the trough as possible. Creating so many state governmental agencies also serves to shuffle money around and make it almost impossible to track the funds, thwarting any accountability until it's too late, as in the case of Campbell, and the money is long gone.

Big government does not lend itself to transparency and that's the idea. It was certainly Riley's idea it appears.

Riley added insult to injury and gave Mr. Campbell an additional plum role a full two years after the thefts began and appointed Campbell as a "special adviser" to the Alabama Rural Action Commission in Summer of 2007 according to the ASBDC newsletter:

Governor Bob Riley appointed ASBDC State Director, William Campbell, as a Special Advisor to the Alabama Rural Action Commission (ARAC).

Crows the rooster Riley about this multi-layered economic endeavor:  

Governor Riley said “I am excited about our efforts to expand the action commission model statewide.”  We have an exceptional leadership team in Central Alabama that is working hard to involve local citizens and to build the partnerships needed to improve the quality of life for citizens in this part of our state.”

How many agencies do we need in this state that are focused on economic development? Wouldn't it make better fiscal sense to have one central agency? The answer is absolutely yes! And if we had one main agency in place, maybe we would still have $7.3 million in our Education Fund coffers. And whose idea was it to fund the ASBDC with education fund money? The Alabama Legislature helped to make that happen through bill passage. Was that approved because ASBDC is affiliated with the four-year college system and the federal government was piping money into the state under certain approved uses?

Federal money has gotten Alabama into more trouble because of greed, misappropriation and the basic inability to balance the books more than anything else. Our politicians are like crack addicts with federal money and like an addict, they simply cannot be trusted to make fiscally sound decisions. Instead, they pass it around to their buddies and large campaign donors by creating all these redundant agencies.

We were in education prorartion twice under Riley and here we are again in Bentley's term right back in it again. Our schools and Alabama's children have to suffer because of grown men acting irresponsibly. It's no wonder the state education system and state budgets are in shambles. With all the dual salaries (double dipping), agencies doing the same thing under a different name and political payback, the government in this state is ripe for corruption and misappropriation of vast sums of money.

Campbell set up his own little "non-profit" drainer the Alabama Small Business Institute of Commerce that received all of it's money through appropriations, grants and contracts from the education budget. It was the perfect ruse to pilfer with wild abandon unchecked and unsupervised. He wrote checks worth tens thousands to unidentified women known only as "the Little Sisters." They probably were not the Little Sisters of Charity and didn't wear habits.

More play money went to Hooters, and swankier eateries like PF Changs and various clothing outlets like Neiman Marcus, in addition to repeated purchases of bracelets that were inscribed with "Lil' Sister" and "Sir William." 

This is sounding more like a cathouse than a house of charity and "Sir William" considered himself the large and in charge Mr. Big Bucks. The indictment alleges Campbell frequently bought expensive gifts for the women and we can only imagine what that might have been 'gratitude' for.

Others were culpable and aided the scheme, but those names have not been released yet. In fact, the original indictment was sealed in May of 2010 and the only reason anyone knows this theft occurred is because of the unsealing of the original indictment by a federal judge, who issued a new one this week. 

All of this was the end result of an IRS Criminal Division and FBI investigation.

Did Riley know about the indictment? It's hard to believe he didn't.

Did he know what Campbell was doing for five years? It's hard to believe he didn't know about that either, but we're not saying he actually did.

What we do think is that the sealing of this indictment was a political power move to not embarrass a sitting governor who was responsible for Mr. Campbell being in a position to pull off this alleged crime.

Now what does that remind us of? Maybe the $635,000 that went into Senator Pittman's and Baldwin County Commissioner James' pockets? Riley was the one responsible for putting Pittman charge of the $1.2 million in BP funds. But that turned out differently than Campbell's tomfoolery--Pittman has thus far escaped any justice for his scheme and the Alabama Ethics Commission refuses to even investigate the matter.

Or many others that have occurred during the last eight years. Riley has commended Ethics Commission director Jim Sumner more than once over the years for "his outstanding service to the state of Alabama."

He really meant 'Jim does what I tell him to do' in our opinions.

There are countless other examples of chicanery during the Riley administration, too many to list here, but there is one overriding theme to all of it--very bad judgement in appointing dishonest honest people in charge of huge amounts of money going to every place under the sun but where it was intended to go.

And here's Governor Dr. Dr. Bentley crying all over the state that "we're broke!"

The problem is that we're worse than "broke."

What we really are is 'broken' from decades of corruption.

Indictment is not a conviction and under the laws of the US, Mr. Campbell is presumed innocent until proven guilty, but the government is alleging some very serious misconduct.

**According to court records, Campbell was arrested on April 1, 2011, forced to surrender his passport and posted a Surety Bond of $100,000.00. Attorney of record April 1: Stephen W. Shaw 

FullIndictmentMWilliamCampbellJr
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