Hensley man gets 2 years, must pay $208,000 for defrauding U.S.
A Pulaski County man convicted by a jury last year of defrauding the Social Security Administration and the Department of Veterans Affairs out of nearly $400,000 over an eight-year period beginning in mid-2009 was sentenced to two years in federal prison Tuesday and ordered to pay more than $208,000 in restitution.
Rickey L. Warren of Hensley was accused in a federal indictment handed up in January 2019 of receiving disability benefits from both agencies while he was also operating a construction company that he said he had shut down.
Warren, 58, is also charged with bankruptcy fraud in a superseding indictment handed up in September 2019, which alleged that between July 2015 and March 2017, Warren lied to the U.S. bankruptcy trustee in an effort to discharge $462,000 owed to various creditors. He was found guilty on all charges by a jury following a four-day trial last July.
Warren was originally scheduled for trial the previous October but proceedings were abruptly halted as jury selection was getting underway when Warren appeared to suffer a drug overdose in the courtroom. Witnesses said that when he walked into the courtroom on opening day of the trial, Warren sat at the defense table and began slipping pills into his mouth before slumping to the floor. After the incident, U.S. District Judge Susan Webber Wright ordered Warren taken into federal custody and ordered a psychiatric examination before recusing from the case due to pending retirement.
The case was later reassigned to Chief U.S. District Judge D. Price Marshall Jr.
The hearing Tuesday hit an early roadblock when Assistant U.S. Attorney Edward Onassis
Walker entered an objection to the pre-sentence report, saying the restitution amount listed was not sufficient to reimburse the Social Security Administration for its loss. Following several minutes of discussion and a recess to consider the matter, Marshall said that due to the age of the case and the late notice of the insufficiency, the amount listed would be the amount of restitution ordered.
Three people, Warren’s former attorney, a daughter and a brother, gave statements alluding to the defendant’s mental decline over time, especially since he was taken into federal custody. Ricky Hicks, an attorney and longtime friend of Warren’s, described him as “an extremely hard-working individual” who was proud of his service in the U.S. Navy and who worked for Alltel until he was laid off, at which time he started his own business.
“Rickey Warren is a guy who just refuses to sit on his butt and do nothing,” Hicks said. “He would do whatever he had to for his family.”
Warren’s daughter, Candace, described how her father’s mental state had declined since his indictment.
“Incarceration is not helping him,” she said. “We go see him every Saturday and he’s different. He’s not improving.”
“To see him going through this,” said his brother, James Warren,” I know how hard it is on him and his family.”
Warren’s attorney, Toney Baker Brasuell of Little Rock, told Marshall that Warren had already spent nearly 600 days in federal custody, incarcerated in Sheridan as well as in facilities in Texas and Little Rock. He asked Marshall to sentence Warren to time served and a period of supervised release with orders for mental health treatment.
“He has served a substantial amount of time in jail for this offense,” Brasuell said. “With mental health issues it takes time to figure out what works.”
Walker asked Marshall to consider a high-end guideline sentence of 30 months in prison.
“If you look at the charges,” Walker said, “you see a common theme of an individual who was categorized as playing the ends against the middle. He had financial difficulties on top of his depression disorder and it caused him to continue to steal from the country that he served. … There were numerous stop signs and occasions for him to acknowledge he may have been receiving benefits unlawfully.”
Warren, who had engaged in a number of spirited backand-forth exchanges with the judge, spoke on his own behalf for more than five minutes in a rambling, often hard to follow statement, insisting that a recorded interview played during his trial had been faked.
“That was not my voice,” Warren said. “No sir. Yes sir. No. If you play that recording that’s a fake interview. … That’s not my voice. I was in prison when that interview was made.”
Warren said during the time he was incarcerated in California, he had been chained to a bed for 90 days and was given no medication.
“And he says I’m not sick,” Warren said, pointing at Walker. “The doctor says I’m sick. But they gave me not one iota of medication. Let me say it this way, in 1989 the Navy retired me. They gave me $8,000. I went to this VA and they gave me $88. Who retires from a whole job as a … machinist in the Navy for $88? I should have been 100% in 1989. … I’m a victim. I need help and I never got it. … I’m sick. I attempted suicide and I’ve been in jail ever since.”
As he spoke, Warren grew more and more agitated, accusing the VA of wrongdoing and saying he has been hearing voices for months, “24 hours a day.”
“I see people who are out of their minds and don’t know what they’re doing and I see people who are simply corrupt,” Marshall said, as he prepared to announce the sentence. “You aren’t either of these extremes but you are somewhere in the middle.”
Marshall sentenced Warren to serve two years on each of the four counts he was convicted of, to be served concurrently for a total of two years and to pay $137,224 in restitution to the Social Security Administration and $71,417.42 to the Department of Veterans Affairs. He did not impose a fine.