Jurors in the first Quality Paving criminal case found a former company official not guilty on all counts after deliberating this afternoon for just more than two hours.
Louis Schimpf had been charged with 33 felony felony countys of theft, attempt to influence a public official and forgery.
In closing arguments, Shimpf was portrayed by the prosecution as a vested participant in an elaborate scheme to defraud Adams County taxpayers and by his defense as an unwitting, ethical employee simply doing what his boss told him to do.
Schimpf was the scheduling manager at Quality Paving’s sister company, Quality Resurfacing.
Prosecutors have alleged that the company’s top officials conspired with employees in the Adams County Department of Public Works in an elaborate scheme that saw taxpayers billed for $1.8 million in road work that was never done. The scheme was carried out, prosecutors alleged, as the Adams County commissioners repeatedly extended the company’s 2004 contracts without a bidding process on the agreement that the prices would not be raised in subsequent years.
Instead, prosecutors alleged, Quality Paving and Quality Resurfacing workers, in concert with two county employees, falsified work and billing records. The net result, according to court documents, was that taxpayers overpaid for a number of jobs and in some cases paid for work that was never done – including resurfacing a non-existent intersection.
In the case of Schimpf, prosecutors alleged that he falsified 25 of 29 daily “quantity reports” detailing the amount of material used to seal cracks on county roads. In each of those cases, Schimpf was accused of inflating the quantity of materials used to drive up the amount of money the company would be paid.
“The defendant knew that Quality Resurfacing couldn’t make money in 2006 and 2007 using 2004 prices,” prosecutor Cynthia Kowert said in her closing argument. “He knew that, and he knew that’s why he needed to inflate the quantity reports. And that’s why he did it.”
Kowert grew animated as she wrapped up her argument.
“It has got to stop,” she said. “The evidence is there. Find him guilty. Find him guilty.”
But defense attorney Todd Calvert painted an entirely different picture in his address to the jury, which began just after the lunch break.
“This case began about being about character and credibility and common sense, and it remains a case about character, credibility and common sense,” Calvert said.
Why, he asked jurors, would Quality Paving owner and president Jerry Rhea, his right-hand man, Dennis Coen, and Schimpf’s boss, Heath Russo, pick the newly hired Schimpf to participate in a conspiracy that Calvert said had been going on for years.
“Why would they bring Louie Schimpf into their criminal conspiracy?,” Calvert asked. “They had every reason not to. They had no reason to do it.”
Several company employees, he reminded jurors, testified that they knew nothing of the billing irregularities. And if they didn’t know about it, he said, why would Schimpf?
“It defies common sense,” Calvert said.
And Russo, one of the prosecution’s witness, is a man who on the witness stand was “making it up as he goes along,” while Schimpf, he said, is a man of credibility and honesty.
All of the documents that were forged, Calvert said, were the result of Schimpf simply following the instructions of Russo, his boss.
“Mr. Schimpf, on the instructions of Mr. Russo’s orders, followed Mr. Russo’s orders and made changes,” Calvert said.
In all, Schimpf faces 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.
