After only a day of deliberation, the jury has returned a guilty verdict on former Pedernales Electric Cooperative (PEC) general manager Bennie Fuelberg on all counts of money laundering, theft, and misapplication of fiduciary property.
During the two weeks of trial, the prosecution showed how Bennie Fuelberg filtered money through Clark, Thomas & White, the co-op’s law firm, to his lobbyist brother, Curtis, and Bill Price, the son of a co-op board member. Fuelberg also misdirected staff, removing oversight of the co-ops legal bills from other managers in an attempt to hide the money being passed through to his brother.
Prosecutor Harry White detailed this in his closing arguments Thursday: “The reason Bennie Fuelberg kept a secret was because he knew it was wrong. What he did was he took money that didn’t belong to him, that belonged to normal people, and gave it to his brother.”
As an aside, Clark, Thomas & White repaid over $4 million in fees to PEC in a separate lawsuit, showing just how much money Bennie siphoned away from the co-op over the years.
Several of us here at Public Citizen are current or former PEC members. We were part of the original investigations and lawsuits that opened up the wretched hive of scum and villany that Fuelberg had turned the co-op into, and have worked for and are proud of the reforms that have taken place in the past few years.
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