A former state Cabinet official admitted yesterday stealing nearly $100,000 - including child support money - from the Anne Arundel County social services program he ran for about seven years.
Brent Millard Johnson, a once-promising political star, pleaded guilty to two of about 900 charges stemming from a scheme prosecutors say he operated from July 1998 until his resignation as director of the county Child Support Initiative Program in August last year.
The plea agreement calls for the 61-year-old Annapolis resident to pay $92,000 in restitution to the Department of Social Services, which closed the program early this year. The rest of the charges were dropped.
Johnson, who was secretary of the newly created state Department of Employment and Training from 1983 to 1986 under then-Gov. Harry R. Hughes, could face a sentence of up to 15 years in prison and a $1,000 fine.
Assistant State's Attorney Warren W. Davis III said he will seek a prison term at the sentencing hearing Jan. 22.
Johnson, who first gained prominence in the state's community college system in the 1970s and early 1980s, later won praise for his running of Anne Arundel's Child Support Initiative Program, which offered job training, educational programs, and financial and other assistance for parents who faced jail time for not paying child support. The charges against Johnson alleged that he stole $368,000 from 117 fathers in the program.
Davis said Johnson co-signed the checks for some participants and was the only signatory for other participants' checks. Davis said many of the men needed help cashing their checks because they had no bank accounts.
Johnson resigned from his $51,688-a-year post after his supervisors, alerted to a problem, noticed financial irregularities and the near-doubling of the program's expenditures. The criminal case grew out of a state investigation requested by Johnson's supervisors.
Prosecutors said they believe much of the money was spent on horse-racing bets.
"We had evidence to show he was at the track," Davis said, noting that Pimlico Race Course and Laurel Park were among the tracks Johnson frequented.
Johnson referred questions to his lawyer, who said, "Those questions and those reports will be discussed at sentencing."
In court yesterday, George S. Lantzas, his attorney, said that Johnson received treatment for "depression and some compulsive behavior."
Restitution will go to the Department of Social Services because the checks came from that agency. The agency's director did not respond to telephone calls yesterday.
In agreeing to the plea, Davis said the prosecution "got everything [it] could possibly have hoped to get with a trial." He also acknowledged that a trial might have been risky.
Davis said that filling a courtroom with clients of Johnson's program - many of them furious to learn that they owed even more in tardy child support - would have been impossible. Finding them has been a challenge, as some are transient and others are incarcerated. Only a few showed up for a September hearing, despite the issuing of dozens of subpoenas by prosecutors.
Johnson enjoyed wide discretion in the administration of the program. Some fathers had said that they never entered job-training but remained in the program. Others said they could barely read but signed papers they believed were for Johnson to send child support payments directly to their children's mothers.
Among fathers in the program caught up in Johnson's embezzlement was William Derr Jr.
Johnson was alleged to have kept $1,700 from Derr's child support payments. Derr believes he avoided jail on past-due child support only by producing paperwork from Johnson's criminal case to show that money intended for him was siphoned off. He said is considering attending Johnson's sentencing.
"I'd like to go and see him and tell him, 'Thank you for screwing my life up,'" Derr said. "I'd like to say, 'Thanks for nothing, I hope you had a good time on that money.'"