United States Attorney James T. Jacks
Northern District of Texas

FRIDAY, OCTOBER 22, 2010
http://www.usdoj.gov/usao/txn/

APPELLATE COURT UPHOLDS MAN’S CONVICTION FOR
DEFRAUDING PANTEX OF NEARLY $200,000

Defendant Roy David Williams Ordered to Surrender to Bureau of Prisons

AMARILLO, Texas — The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, in an unpublished opinion, has upheld the May 2009 judgment and conviction of Roy David Williams, of Amarillo and Lake Tanglewood, Texas, on all 29 counts of an indictment charging him with various offenses related to his defrauding Pantex from August 2007 through June 2008, announced U.S. Attorney James T. Jacks of the Northern District of Texas.

In May 2009, following a three-day trial, a federal jury in Amarillo, Texas, found Williams, 58, guilty on one count of wire fraud, 11 counts of contractors bonds, bids and public records, 16 counts of false, fictitious or fraudulent claims and one count of theft of public money. He was sentenced in September 2009 by U.S. District Judge Mary Lou Robinson to 30 months in prison and ordered to pay $168,848 in restitution. Shortly after sentencing, Williams appealed. While Judge Robinson allowed Williams to remain on bond pending his appeal, today she ordered that he surrender to the Bureau of Prisons on November 15, 2010, to begin serving his 30-month sentence.

The Pantex Nuclear Facility is a nuclear weapons assembly/disassembly facility owned by the U.S. Department of Energy. Pantex is managed and operated by Babcock and Wilcox (B&W Pantex) for the Department of Energy National Nuclear Security Administration. B&W Pantex routinely employs subcontractors to perform services for Pantex.

Roy David Williams owned and operated WAATTS, Inc., from an office at the Amarillo National Bank Plaza II in downtown Amarillo. On August 28, 2007, B&W Pantex and WAATTS contracted for WAATTS to provide technical services to B&W Pantex. WAATTS’ staff included Williams, his wife, daughter and several other individuals.

As part of his scheme to defraud Pantex, Williams listed WAATTS’ business address in Lenoir City, Tennessee. That business address was actually the residence of an acquaintance of Williams; Williams did little to no business in Tennessee. Williams also listed an address in Oak Ridge, Tennessee, as his permanent mailing address on his Pantex security badging documents. Williams and his family have lived in the Amarillo area since 1992 and he has no relatives or acquaintances who reside at the Oak Ridge address he provided Pantex. Williams also provided Pantex a Leonard, Texas, (approximately 350 miles from Amarillo), address for one of his employees; that employee, however, has resided in Amarillo since 2004.

As part of Williams’ scheme to defraud Pantex, he engaged in unauthorized future bid preparations and other WAATTS management activities while he was both at the Pantex plant and off-site, and billed Pantex for those unauthorized hours. Williams submitted payment requests for hours he and his employees worked at the Pantex plant, when he knew that neither he nor his employees were at Pantex during those billed hours. Williams inflated the hours he and his employees worked and claimed per diem expenses to which he was not entitled.

Williams also requested that Pantex send wire transfers to a bank account he maintained in Tennessee, and then requested the bank send corresponding wire transfers from the Tennessee bank to a bank account he maintained in Amarillo — all designed to conceal the claimed fraudulent per diem payments. Williams submitted false, forged, altered and counterfeited time cards to Pantex in support of service invoices that included hours not worked and hours spent on non-contract work.

Williams fraudulently received more than $169,000 of public money from Pantex.

The case was investigated by the Department of Energy - Office of Inspector General. Assistant U.S. Attorneys Christy Drake and Vicki Lamberson of the Amarillo, Texas, U.S. Attorney’s Office, and Assistant U.S. Attorney Delonia Watson of the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Fort Worth, Texas, prosecuted.

###