Marilla's former highway chief gets prison term for stealing from town
Pierce apologizes for abusing office
Marilla’s former longtime highway superintendent will spend seven months in federal prison for stealing from the town and using town workers to build a huge fishing and swimming pond on his family property.
After apologizing to family, friends and taxpayers, 55-year-old David Pierce was sentenced Monday afternoon by U. S. District Judge Richard J. Arcara.
Pierce said problems with alcoholism, anxiety, depression and greed led to his illegal activities. His attorney, Anthony J. Lana, said Pierce admitted his crimes almost immediately after FBI agents confronted him about them in February.
“There’s not a day that goes by that I don’t regret the bad decisions that put me here,” Pierce said.
Arcara said he believes Pierce is sorry, but the judge said the former elected official’s emotional problems are not an acceptable excuse. He said Pierce used town employees as though they were his “personal valets.”
“When you have difficulties, abusing the public trust is not the way to correct or deal with these difficulties,” Arcara said. “I can’t understand how anybody can put themselves in this situation.”
An FBI probe into corruption in Pierce’s department led to the guilty pleas taken earlier this year by Pierce and Springville businessman Ronald Wells, Assistant U. S. Attorney Martin J. Littlefield said.
Wells sold snowplow blades and other truck equipment to the Marilla Highway Department. Pierce and Wells concocted a scheme in which Pierce submitted phony invoices for equipment that was never actually purchased from Wells’ company. Littlefield said the two men then split up the proceeds of about $16,000 that they stole from the town.
FBI agents also learned that Pierce used town workers to build a pond that covers “several acres” of his family’s property off Four Rod Road, the prosecutor said.
Arcara ordered Pierce to repay $20,700 to the town, and, according to Lana, much of that has been repaid already.
Wells was sentenced to probation last month, and Arcara ordered him to repay the town $16,000.
Pierce, whose family has been widely known in Marilla for a century, had been highway superintendent for 20 years before the FBI probe led to his resignation.
