New Jersery Man Pleads Guilty in $3M Federal Bribery Case

WILMINGTON, Del. – David C. Weiss, United States Attorney for the District of Delaware, announced that Stephen Williams, of Neptune, New Jersey, pled guilty in federal court today to bribery in connection with programs receiving federal funds.  Williams is the co-defendant of Crystal Martin, the Delaware State University (“DSU”) administrator who pled guilty to the same bribery scheme in April 2019.  Williams’ sentencing is scheduled for September 6, 2019 before the Honorable Richard G. Andrews, United States District Judge for the District of Delaware. Williams faces a maximum penalty of 10 years of imprisonment.

According to court documents and statements made in open court, between 2013 and 2017, Williams was the mastermind of a bribery scheme at DSU.  Williams recruited students to pay him a fee to change their student registration status from out-of-state residency to in-state residency.  After students paid him their fee, Williams helped create forged residency documents, such as leases, and then delivered the forged documents to his co-defendant Martin to place in the students’ files, justifying the residency changes that Martin recorded in the university’s computer system.  Williams paid Martin a percentage of the fee he collected from each student whose residency was changed, amounting to approximately $70,000 over the course of four years. Williams also paid DSU students to recruit others interested in having their registration status changed.  While the total amount that Williams profited from his scheme remains unknown, the estimated cost of reduced tuition payments to DSU during this four-year-period exceeded $3 million.

U.S. Attorney Weiss stated, “The defendant created and ran a four-year scheme that defrauded Delaware State University.  In so doing, he encouraged hundreds of people, and most importantly his co-defendant Martin, to break the law.  Further, he deprived his own alma mater and Delaware taxpayers of the rightful tuition proceeds for Delaware State University so that he could personally profit.  Defendants who repeatedly break the law for their own personal gain at the expense of Delaware citizens must be held accountable.”

"The FBI is committed to protecting the public trust.  When individuals conspire to defraud public institutions, the FBI will aggressively pursue those who seek to financially gain from their illegal schemes," said Jennifer L. Moore, Acting Special Agent in Charge of the Baltimore Division. "The investigation and subsequent prosecution of the defendants revealed they had engaged in a pervasive pattern of fraud and corruption, betraying the university, its students and our community.  The cooperation among law enforcement agencies in Delaware led to the dismantlement of the defendants’ enterprise and I applaud the efforts of the investigators and prosecutors."

“Tracking down those who cheat the Federal student aid program will always be a priority of our office,” said Geoffrey Wood, Special Agent in Charge of the U.S. Department of Education Office of Inspector General’s Eastern Region. “That’s why I’m proud of the work of OIG special agents and our law enforcement partners in holding Mr. Williams accountable for his criminal actions and we’ll continue to work together to protect Federal education funds from this type of fraud.”

This case was investigated by FBI Baltimore Division's Wilmington Office, the U.S. Department of Education Office of Inspector General, and Delaware State Police, with assistance from the Delaware Department of Justice’s Office of Civil Rights and Public Trust.  The case is being prosecuted by Assistant U.S. Attorneys Laura D. Hatcher and Whitney Cloud.