Darin Richardson Convicted in First Woodpile Case

A Virgin Islands jury Wednesday found Darin Richardson guilty of all five charges federal prosecutors brought against the former V.I. Housing Finance Authority executive over the last year. After a full day of deliberations, the jury foreperson told the court that the panel determined Richardson was guilty of making material false statements to a federal agent, criminal conflict of interest, bank fraud, money laundering and making false statements on a loan application.

A sentencing date has not yet been set, and the government did not ask that Richardson be detained ahead of his sentencing.

The verdicts came after a nearly two week-trial, during which prosecutors sought to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that Richardson received a $107,000 kickback for improperly awarding a warehouse management services contract to steward lumber for disaster recovery projects and that, later, he lied on a home construction loan application and used portions of the money he received to buy property.

While at VIHFA, Richardson — then the semiautonomous agency’s chief operating officer — served on the bid evaluation committee that awarded a nearly $3 million warehousing contract to Island Services Group. The contract was amended multiple times over the next year, increasing to more than $4.3 million. ISG subcontracted the actual work to D&S Trucking. That company’s owners, Davidson and Sasha Charlemagne, were also indicted in June.