A paving company carried out a long-running scheme that bilked Adams County taxpayers of millions of dollars, a defense attorney asserted Wednesday during opening arguments in the first case involving Quality Paving Co. to go to trial.
But while “the fraud was massive, and it went on for years,” attorney Todd Calvert said, it involved three people at Quality Paving and conspirators in the county’s public works department — and not the 57-year-old scheduling manager on trial now.
Louie Schimpf’s only crime, Calvert said, was to do what he was told.
Schimpf faces 33 felony counts in the case — three counts of theft, three counts of conspiracy to commit theft, two counts of attempting to influence a public official and 25 counts of forgery.
Six people were arrested and charged in the scandal involving Quality Paving and its sister firm, Quality Resurfacing — four company officials and employees and two workers in the Adams County Department of Public Works. Prosecutors alleged that company officials overbilled for some work and, in other cases, billed for work that was never done.
Two of those who were arrested have pleaded guilty and agreed to testify against others — Heath Russo, a former Quality Resurfacing official, and Stacey Parkin, a former construction inspector for the county.
Trials are pending for Jerry Rhea, the former president of Quality Paving and Quality Resurfacing; Dennis Coen, the former vice president of Quality Paving; and Sam Gomez, the former construction manager for Adams County public works.
As Schimpf’s trial opened, prosecutor Dan Brechbuhl told jurors that the scheme was simple. In 2006 and 2007, he said, Schimpf repeatedly falsified invoices showing the amount of crack sealing that had been done on county roads. As a result, county taxpayers paid for work that wasn’t done.
The scheme was carried out, he said, because Quality Paving and Quality Resurfacing, in order to keep winning no-bid contracts from the county, agreed to keep charging 2004 prices in subsequent years. But the company would have lost money on the contracts, he told jurors, so instead, officials simply falsified bills so they could realize a profit.
Russo, he told jurors, would testify that “it was common knowledge around the company that they were going to inflate the prices.”
And, he said, Russo would testify that Schimpf was in on the scheme.
Calvert painted a different picture — of a scheme carried out secretly by Rhea, Coen, Russo and Gomez that Schimpf never knew about.
Schimpf, Calvert told jurors, was a truck driver and heavy- equipment operator thrust into an office job for the first time and was not sophisticated enough to understand what his bosses were doing.
“Everybody who worked there thought it was legit,” Calvert said.
