Zachary Fitzgerald
A judge found Armond Duhon guilty of 221 counts of theft, two counts of money laundering and one count of racketeering for his role in helping to steal nearly $2 million from a Morgan City company.
Both the prosecution and defense finished presenting their cases June 15 in a trial that began June 12. Duhon chose a trial by judge and was tried separately from his co-defendants. The criminal activity in the bill of information took place from January 1999 through March 2014.
Judge Keith Comeaux of the 16th Judicial District issued the guilty verdict June 16 on numerous counts of theft that totaled about $1.8 million and found Armond Duhon guilty of every count that included his name in the bill of information filed by the district attorney. Comeaux set a sentencing hearing for 9 a.m. Sept.11. Comeaux ordered Duhon to be remanded into custody of the St. Mary Parish Sheriff’s Office until that sentencing date.
Duhon, 63, of Morgan City, was found to be involved in a criminal enterprise to steal millions of dollars from Capital Management Consultants Inc., a Morgan City-based investment holdings company. The late Peter V. Guarisco founded the company in 1982. Guarisco died in 2005. Members of the Guarisco family testified that they discovered the theft after Capital Management’s ex-CPA James Scott Tucker died in January 2014.
Duhon’s attorney, Edward Jones, said, in opening statement, his client wasn’t involved in the theft, and “doesn’t even know how to balance a checkbook.”
The Guariscos alleged in a lawsuit that Tucker was the mastermind behind a scheme to steal as much as $30 million from Capital Management possibly dating back to the early 1980s, and they placed absolute trust in Tucker to run the company. They also said that Tucker and Duhon’s wife, Karen Duhon, a former part-time bookkeeper for Capital Management, had a romantic relationship. Karen Duhon; the Duhons’ company, A-B-C Siding Co. of Morgan City Inc.; and Nelson-Tucker LLC, which was a CPA business owned by Tucker, all still face charges in the case.
He faces up to 50 years in prison at hard labor and up to a $1 million fine on the racketeering charge. Of the theft counts, 206 counts were for amounts of $1,500 or more, and 15 counts were $500-$1,500. He faces up to 10 years in prison and up to a $3,000 fine on each theft count of $1,500 or more and up to five years in prison and up to a $2,000 fine on each theft count of $500-$1,500. He faces two years to 20 years at hard labor and up to a $20,000 in fine on each money laundering count.
In September 2015, Armond Duhon rejected a plea deal for him to plead guilty to 160 counts of theft of $1,500 or more and one count of racketeering, First Assistant District Attorney Robert Vines said. He would have received a sentencing cap of 25 years and been required to pay restitution to Capital Management’s owners in conjunction with his co-defendants, Vines said.
Armond Duhon’s attorney, Edward Jones, did not call any witnesses to testify during the trial. Jones had intended to call Duhon’s wife, Karen Duhon, who’s also charged in the case, to testify, but learned through her attorney that she didn’t want to do so, he said.
The two counts of money laundering stem from two 2010 purchases and corresponding transactions. Armond Duhon bought a $30,000 Ford King Ranch F250 pickup truck and wrote a check out of the A-B-C Siding account to pay for it. However, he didn’t have sufficient funds in the account to cover that expense. So Karen Duhon wrote a check from Capital Management to the Duhons’ joint account and to A-B-C Siding to cover the truck purchase, Martin said.
He also bought a 2010 Toyota Sequoia for $40,499.50. Witnesses testified that $50,000 had been withdrawn from Capital Management’s account, transferred to Karen Duhon’s personal Whitney Bank account and eventually went to pay Courtesy Toyota for the new vehicle.
Capital Management spokesman Marwin Mohey-El-Dien said that there was “no winning for anybody” in the case. The verdict was “not a joyous moment for anybody,” he said. But it’s not right to be able to steal massive amounts of money and not face consequences, Mohey-El-Dien said.
Mohey-El-Dien is husband of one of Peter Guarisco’s daughters, Laura Guarisco, who first noticed large amounts of money were missing from Capital Management when officials began collecting documents to file the company’s 2013 tax returns. Another daughter of Peter Guarisco, Maria Guarisco, said she trusted Tucker so much that she hired him to pay her personal bills and later discovered that over $500,000 in unauthorized payments had been made from her account.
Prosecution witness and CPA Joan Martin, who performed a forensic fraud analysis in the case, went through each of the 674 counts of theft and 100 counts of money laundering Thursday listed in the bill of information collectively charging the defendants. The bill also charged the defendants with one count of racketeering.
Donnasue Peveto, Tucker’s former assistant, pleaded guilty to racketeering and 123 counts of theft in December 2015 but died in March 2016.
Martin described the pattern of allegedly fraudulent activity that occurred. Karen Duhon would regularly write checks from Capital Management’s account for over $9,000, sometimes up to $14,000, a couple of times a month to made payable to herself.
Karen Duhon would then deposit the checks into a “fake” Capital Management account, which was a joint account of the Duhons but had Capital Management’s name on deposits, Martin said.
Regular checks were also written out the Capital Management account to Peveto for over $9,000. Peveto then wrote “kickback” checks of $4,500 back to Karen Duhon to deposit in her account, she said.
These “kickbacks” from Peveto to Karen Duhon along with diversion of funds into an account for the Duhons’ company, A-B-C Siding, were meant to make the fraud difficult to trace and less likely to be detected, Martin said.
The check amounts were recorded as much smaller amounts in the check register to help conceal the fraud, Martin said. Some checks were also deposited into an account solely in Karen Duhon’s name, she said.
All of the unauthorized checks written before Tucker’s death were signed by him, Martin said.
Once Tucker died and Karen Duhon lost her job, there was an attempt to flush the “fake” Capital Management account that the Duhons operated. Karen Duhon wrote checks to A-B-C Siding and then to a new account set up solely in Armond Duhon’s name, Martin said.
Karen Duhon began signing Capital Management checks after Tucker’s death to allegedly further the fraud.
Witnesses testified during the trial that the Duhons lived lavish lifestyles, driving expensive vehicles and wagering huge amounts money at Cypress Bayou Casino. Armond Duhon wagered $670,000, and Karen Duhon wagered just over $1 million at the slot machines from 2000 to 2014, according to witness testimony. However, the income they reported annually didn’t reflect the couple’s comfortable lifestyles, witnesses said.
Karen Duhon reported annual income ranging from about $33,000 to $47,000 from 2000 to 2014, while Armond Duhon reported $11,083 in income each year as a self-employed general contractor from 2000 to 2006 and no income from 2007 to 2014, said Special Agent Dirk Bergeron of the Office of Inspector General Social Security Administration.