Ex-Goldsboro Housing Authority officials sentenced
By From staff reports
Published in News on September 23, 2014 1:46 PM
Two former employees of the Goldsboro Housing Authority who pleaded guilty in federal court to unlawful conversion of federal funds have been sentenced, one to seven months in prison followed by three years probation. The second was sentenced to three years probation.
Robert Edward Coggins Jr. will serve his time at Butner Correctional Institute before going on probation.
Gene Dexter Thomas received no active prison time but will be on probation for three years.
Each is required to repay $109,104 as restitution.
Separately, Thomas also had his real estate agent's license revoked by the North Carolina Real Estate Commission.
The two men pleaded guilty to falsifying documents to give the appearance that the authority had a licensed general contractor on its payroll when it did not.
Thomas, 60, was executive director of the authority. Coggins, 59, is the former assistant director.
A third former Goldsboro Housing employee, Jimmie Lewis Farmer, 61, was sentenced in a separate case. Farmer, who was director of development and safety for the authority, was sentenced on Aug. 7 to two years of probation and fined $1,000. Farmer pleaded guilty on May 23, 2012, to making material false statements.
The authority is required to maintain a general contractor's license from the North Carolina Board for General Contractors because it is regularly involved in the construction of dwellings for low-income people in Goldsboro.
The board's rules require that the qualifier be a "responsible managing employee" of the authority. It also requires that the qualifier work a minimum of 20 hours a week for the authority as an employee -- not as a contractor.
Coggins resigned from the authority in 2002, which left it without a qualifier. After Coggins resigned, court document show that he and Thomas created a plan to use Coggins as the authority's qualifier even though Coggins was no longer an authority employee.
Court records also show that authority employees routinely falsified time sheets reflecting that Coggins worked 20 hours a week.
The investigation of these cases was conducted by the United States Department of Housing and Urban Development's Office of the Inspector General, the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Wayne County Sheriff's Office.