By DEBRA HAIGHT
BCR Correspondent
NILES – One of the two men convicted of one of the worst area embezzlement cases in recent years was sentenced to prison this week in Berrien County Trial Court. The other man involved in the embezzlement scheme will be sentenced in June to give him more time to sell properties to pay toward restitution.
Berrien County Trial Judge Charles LaSata said Monday that Southeast Berrien County Landfill employee Terry Snow violated the trust of the landfill board and the thousands of people the landfill served when he and landfill general manager Clyde “Sonny” Fuller III embezzled over $250,000.
“This is a sad situation and it’s more sad when I see all the letters of support from the people you let down,” LaSata told Snow. “This is one of the worst embezzlements I’ve seen. Here, there are thousands of victims in the landfill service area.”
“As testimony showed during the preliminary hearing in January, we wouldn’t be here but for a board member not being satisfied with answers about bills and digging deeper. There has to be a certain amount of trust in the community. The landfill put their trust in you and you breached it in a huge way.”
Snow, 54, of Pipestone Road in Eau Claire, was sentenced Monday to a term
of 20 months to 20 years in prison. He has credit for three days already served and was ordered to pay just under $294,000 in restitution and $258 in fines and costs.
Monday, Snow apologized for his actions and his bad judgment. “I would like to apologize,” he said. “This has embarrassed me, I used bad judgment.”
Defense attorney William Weise didn’t minimize his client’s actions but said Snow was the least culpable of the two men. “The co-defendant (Fuller) was his supervisor and had the idea to do this,” Weise said. “My client felt pressure from Fuller.”
Weise said Snow’s actions spoke louder than words as he was the first to plead guilty and admitted to what he did. He turned over $25,900 he had in trust from Snow toward the restitution owed. Judge LaSata also ordered a 2012 Dodge Ram truck and $66,000 in a United Federal Credit Union account forfeited.
Berrien County Chief Assistant Prosecutor Jennifer Smith read a victim impact panel submitted by the landfill board. She said the embezzlement had had a “dramatically negative impact” on the landfill, both in terms of the money embezzled and tarnishing the trust the landfill had earned in the community.
“This was obviously a serious blow to the landfill and the community,” Smith said. “This was planned. This was several incidents, not just one.”
Snow and Fuller each pleaded guilty to one count of embezzlement over $100,000 in late March. The embezzlement from the publicly owned landfill started in December 2016 and continued until their termination from their jobs last July.
The embezzlement was discovered by Niles Township Trustee Herschel Hoese who is also a landfill board member. Hoese testified in January that he had concerns about large payments to an unknown company and asked the Berrien County Sheriff’s Department to investigate.
Investigators uncovered the fact that Fuller and Snow had set up a shell company and funneled money to it from the landfill. Those payments totaled nearly $250,000 between December 2016 and June 2017. Restitution was also ordered for other landfill expenses including $29,000 in attorney fees in investigating the matter.
The sentencing for Fuller, 47, of Able Road in Buchanan, was delayed 30 days to
give him time to sell two properties he owns in the city of Buchanan. The plea agreement he reached with the Berrien County Prosecutor calls for him to serve a minimum of 40 months in prison.
Judge LaSata revoked Fuller’s bond and ordered him to serve the time before sentencing in jail while he finishes work on the property sale.
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