Former RHA secretary Janis White, a co-conspirator with George Moses, sentenced to two years
A federal judge Friday sentenced former Rochester Housing Authority Executive Secretary Janis White to two years for her criminal collaborations with George Moses, who previously headed the Authority's board.
White is the last co-conspirator with Moses to be sentenced. Moses is still awaiting sentencing for wide-ranging fraud, as prosecutors and defense lawyers are sparring over what the sentence range should be under federal guidelines. His sentencing is now set for November, and he remains jailed.
White's federal sentencing range was 24 to 30 months under advisory guidelines. Prosecutors asked for a sentence of 30 months, while White's defense lawyers sought probation.
In a statement, White apologized for her crime — wire fraud — and faulted herself. She helps care for her 87-year-old mother, who was in the court and, in tears, was escorted out after the sentence was imposed.
White pleaded guilty a year ago.
U.S. District Judge Elizabeth Wolford said she had some skepticism about White's remorse. White had contended earlier that another person used her email for the transmission of an invoice that was part of the fraud case against Moses. Prosecutors portrayed the individual named by White as a person unlikely to be able to navigate a computer, much less engage in the deception.
Wolford said she found the claim "implausible," and reminded White that the victims of her crimes were the people who relied on low-income housing through the Housing Authority and subsidiaries.
"She was engaged in theft from those who need it most in our community," Wolford said before sentencing White.
While working with Moses, White created a company, HJJ Property Development, which contracted with an Authority subsidiary, Rochester Housing Charities, or RHC.
In her plea, White admitted to:
• With Moses' knowledge, she created false invoices to make it look like HJJ did jobs it never did.
• Occasionally Moses would use an estimate from a legitimate heating and air conditioning company for White to create an almost identical but false invoice from HJJ with a greater cost. Once a company offered to do a job for $9,000, and White and Moses conspired to create a false HJJ invoice of $15,000 for the job. RHC paid the full $15,000, and the legitimate company received its $9,000.
• In 2018, the RHC was defrauded into paying HJJ about $87,000 — about $28,000 of which was then routed to a legitimate company that had done the work. The overall loss to RHC of the conspiracy between White and Moses was close to $59,000.
White was ordered to pay restitution for the loss.
Contact Gary Craig at gcraig@gannett.com. Follow him on Twitter at gcraig1.
This article originally appeared on Rochester Democrat and Chronicle: Former RHA secretary Janis White sentenced to two years
