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Ex-prison official may face 20 years

An indictment says the former chief of a board overseeing privately run prisons stole $225,000.

By JONI JAMES
Published September 8, 2005

TALLAHASSEE - A federal grand jury has charged the former chief of Florida's private prison oversight board with stealing nearly $225,000 from state coffers for personal use.

The indictment, unsealed Wednesday, charges Alan Brown Duffee, 39, with three counts of wire fraud, one count of mail fraud and two counts of money laundering.

If convicted, the former state employee could face up to 20 years in prison and a fine of $250,000. Now the head of a Tallahassee lobbying firm, Duffee could not be reached for comment. He had not been arrested as of Wednesday evening.

The eight-page federal indictment alleges that three times in 2003, Duffee redirected money from the Florida Correctional Privatization Commission's building maintenance reimbursement fund to a new commission account at a separate bank. Only Duffee had access to the new account, according to the indictment, which states that he had no authority to open it.

There was a $100,000 transfer in May 2003; $20,000 in September 2003; and nearly $55,000 in October 2003.

Duffee "then converted the . . . funds to his personal use . . . wholly unrelated to the business of the CPC," the indictment alleges.

As part of the indictment, the grand jury authorized seizure of Duffee's home in northeast Tallahassee, which Leon County records show he purchased for $113,500 in 2003; a 2003 Ford Focus and up to $224,972.92 in cash - the amount Duffee is accused of stealing.

Officials with the U.S. Attorney's Office and the Florida Department of Law Enforcement, which worked the case with the Internal Revenue Service, declined to elaborate on the charges Wednesday. The indictment is silent on how Duffee became subject of an investigation.

The charges come 16 months after he resigned after three years as executive director for the commission, a governor-appointed panel, now defunct, that oversaw the state's five privately run prisons.

In May 2004, state lawmakers, with Gov. Jeb Bush's blessing, voted to abolish the commission amid complaints from vendors about favoritism and a St. Petersburg Times report that Duffee had hired a former state prison official as a consultant in violation of state law.

Duffee and commissioners argued they were victims of vendor retaliation because they were pushing to rebid the state's lucrative private prison contracts. Boca Raton-based GEO Group and Nashville-based Corrections Corporation of America have held the contracts for a decade.

In July, an audit by the Department of Management Services, which now oversees the prison contracts, found the commission had overpaid $13-million over eight years.

Shortly after leaving the commission, Duffee joined The Windsor Group, a multicity lobbying firm, and eventually struck a deal to buy it from former owner Barney Bishop III, now the president of Associated Industries of Florida.

Then in May, Duffee announced he would purchase Clyde's & Costello's, a bar just a block from the Capitol that has long been the favorite watering hole of political insiders.

Neither deal was ever completed, though Duffee remains president and chief executive of The Windsor Group. Bishop said Wednesday he has already given Duffee notice he plans to sue for breach of contract due to nonpayment.

"He's given me three bounced checks and while two have been honored, one has not," Bishop said. "I've been disappointed for quite a while."

[Last modified September 8, 2005, 01:48:07]