Former Mississippi County Landfill director William “Wil” Chester Allen was sentenced to five years probation and restitution of $54,155 July 28 in federal court in Little Rock for honest services fraud.
In September 2020, Allen pled guilty to the charges, which stem from incidents at the landfill.
Allen was terminated in September 2018 after accusations he and his friend Joe Harlon Hamlett were involved in a scheme that allowed Ross Farms Trucking to dump about 70 loads that were never billed, which amounts to about $20,000.
In October James David Ross, a Kennett, Mo., businessman, was convicted by a federal jury of defrauding Mississippi County and the state by bribing then landfill director Allen to allow him to dump demolition debris free.
Ross was convicted on two counts of aiding and abetting honest services mail fraud.
According to the 2018 affidavit, Ed Jernigan, now retired FBI agent, said a federal investigation began in February 2018 after employees at the landfill contacted the FBI saying they had been seeing a truck dumping demolition debris at the landfill without driving over the scales. Jernigan testified in 2018 and again on Thursday.
Assistant U.S. Attorneys Bart Dickinson and Erin O’Leary told jurors the three men aided and abetted each other to deprive the county and the state of Allen’s honest services as a public official.
The scheme turned into mail fraud when the county mailed false quarterly reports about the amount of waste dumped and related checks, to the state Department of Environmental Quality.
“We’re glad that this chapter has come to an end and that it is now behind us,” Mississippi County Judge John Alan Nelson said. “We want to express our faith in the Justice Department and in our courts. We also maintain our commitment to take appropriate corrective action to both prevent and correct unlawful activities and to ensure such behavior is not repeated.”