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Former OU Regent Phil Albert pleads guilty to tax evasion

Phil Albert

Phil Albert during the OU Board of Regents meeting May 8.

 Trey Young/The Daily

Phil Albert, former Pelco Structural manufacturing executive and former OU regent, pleaded guilty to tax evasion in a federal court Friday. 

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.

According to reporting from NonDoc, Albert admitted to evading an estimated $1 million in federal taxes from 2014 to 2019. 

He faces up to five years in prison and a $100,000 fine. Albert’s sentence will be set at a later date.

Albert was also ordered to pay $1,000,232 in restitution to the IRS and $2,615,750 in restitution to Pelco, NonDoc reported. 

Don Eagleton Jr., former Pelco accountant and controller, accused Albert of fraud in a federal plea deal in November 2022 after 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” from 2016 until Albert left the company in 2019.

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.

In August 2022, federal prosecutors filed their case against Eagleton and he pled guilty to misprision of a felony that September. 

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.

In April 2019, Albert resigned from Pelco 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.

This story was edited by Karoline Leonard and Jazz Wolfe.

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