A former accountant accused former Pelco Structural manufacturing executive and former OU Board of Regents member Phil Albert of fraud in a sworn plea deal filed in federal court last week, according to an article from NonDoc.
Albert resigned in January from the OU Board of Regents amid ongoing litigation involving fraud and embezzlement allegations from Pelco, a Claremore-based steel pole manufacturer founded by Albert.
Don Eagleton Jr., a former Pelco accountant and controller, said he “became aware that Albert was engaged in a scheme and artifice to defraud Pelco Structural and its owners by embezzling money from the company,” according to the plea deal.
In the plea deal, Eagleton said Albert received about 29 reimbursement checks which totaled to $1,543,000, all of which were deposited in Albert’s personal checking account. Eagleton said he never alerted law enforcement of these payments.
Eagleton said in the plea deal that, at the direction of Albert, he set up reimbursement payments for Albert. These payments did not appear on Albert’s W-2 form and would not have federal income taxes on them. Eagleton said these reimbursements were made in physical checks rather than direct deposit, as all of Albert’s payments were made in this way.
“Albert did not submit receipts or any documentation to support the alleged reimbursements but would instead write on a scrap piece of paper whatever amount he wanted me to submit as a special reimbursement for him,” Eagleton’s plea deal said.
Eagleton also said he concealed the payments “by falsely miscoding the payments in Pelco Structural’s accounting system so that they would appear within the Cost of Sales-Steel account.” He said by doing so he canceled the payments’ “true nature” and did not accurately represent Pelco's financial statements to neither the owners nor stakeholders.
On Aug. 9, federal prosecutors filed their case against Eagleton, and he plead guilty to misprision of a felony on Sept. 14. Misprision of a felony is when a person conceals and does not report a crime.
Albert resigned from Pelco in April 2019, later filing a wrongful termination lawsuit in November 2019. Later that month, Pelco filed a countersuit, alleging Albert embezzled $7.4 million in company funds between 2010 and 2019.
OU has not commented on the new accusations at this time.
