Phil Albert, former Pelco Structural manufacturing executive and former OU Board of Regents member, will be going to trial next month after being charged last year for tax evasion and embezzlement.
Phil Albert resigned in January 2022 from the OU Board of Regents amid ongoing litigation involving fraud and embezzlement allegations from Pelco Structural, a Claremore-based steel pole manufacturer co-founded by Albert.
Appointed to the Board of Regents in 2016 by former governor Mary Fallin, Phil Albert served on the finance committee and was slated to become the chairman before his resignation last year.
Don Eagleton Jr., former Pelco accountant and controller, accused Albert of fraud in a federal plea deal in November 2022.
Eagleton said that from 2016 until he left his position at Pelco in 2019, 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.”
Eagleton said Albert directed him to use Paychex, a payroll system, to set up a special category of “reimbursement” payments for Albert that would not have federal income taxes withheld or appear on Albert’s W-2 tax form.
Federal prosecutors filed their case against Eagleton in August 2022, and he pled guilty to misprision of a felony that September. Misprision of a felony is when a person conceals and does not report a crime.
29 reimbursement checks were deposited into Albert’s personal checking account at BancFirst bank in Claremore, Oklahoma, totaling $1,543,000, according to the plea deal.
Albert was released on a personal recognizance bond on the condition that he surrendered his passport and did not transfer, sell, give away or otherwise convey any asset, without first consulting with the U.S. Probation Office.
Albert resigned from his role at Pelco in April 2019 and later filed a wrongful termination lawsuit in November 2019. That same month, Pelco filed a countersuit, alleging that Albert embezzled $7.4 million in company funds between 2010 and 2019.
Albert is scheduled to appear for pretrial motions on March 8 in the U.S. District Court for Northern Oklahoma. His jury trial is scheduled for March 27.
This story was edited by Alexia Aston, Jazz Wolfe and Karoline Leonard. Mary Ann Livingood and Nikkie Aisha copy edited this story.
