Former County Employee Pleads Guilty to 49 Felonies

One of the co-conspirators in a scheme to rig the Prince William County Office of Information Technology (OIT) bidding system pled guilty to 49 felonies in Prince William Circuit Court Thursday as part of a plea agreement.

John Patrick Roessler pled guilty to 12 counts of rigging bids, 12 counts of forgery, 12 counts of uttering, 12 counts of false pretenses, and one count of public fraud, which was amended from the original charge of racketeering. The Commonwealth of Virginia decided not to prosecute one charge of felony money laundering.

Judge Craig D. Johnston declined to accept the plea agreement, and instead ordered a pre-sentence report to be brought before him on January 19, 2012, to see if the terms of the agreement met the legal sentencing guidelines for Roessler’s charges.

If the agreement is accepted, Roessler will spend two years in prison with 48 years of prison time suspended. Roessler would be required to help pay $3.7 million that Prince William County lost to Rossler's company, Praetorian Systems. 

Roessler, who served as the head of OIT’s Department of Infrastructure Management worked with OIT systems division chief Maneesh Gupta to set up Praetorian Systems, according to Assistant Commonwealth’s Attorney Jerrold J. Negin.

Negin said they were dissatisfied with the work being done by the outside vendors they gave contracts to and frequently did extra work on the contracts themselves.

“They decided if they were going to work all these hours they should be paid for it,” Negin said in court Thursday.

Also participating was John’s brother, Vernon, who Negin said was part of the conspiracy along with Richard Billingsly, a former County employee who served as president of Praetorian.

Negin said he was given the title solely to hide the involvement of the other three conspirators.

The four used their knowledge of the bids market to undercut Praetorian’s competitors and eventually started forging bids from existing companies to ensure that Prateorian had the lowest bid, according to Negin.

They earned more than eight million from 26 different contracts in that five-year period.

Roessler’s lawyer, Michael Soprano from Fairfax County, said that his client’s intent was never to defraud Prince William County.

“There was never a time they took the money and didn’t do work,” Soprano told the court. “There was no intent to take the money and run.”

Roessler revoked his own bond at the end of the hearing and sent himself to jail in expectation that the coming six months would serve as time credited in the plea agreement.

Maneesh Gupta reached a similar plea agreement June 23, and will wait until Oct. 6 to see if it is accepted. Roessler’s brother Vernon will be in court in Aug. 25 and Billingsley will appear Sept. 14.