The former owner of a California company picked to install a network of electric-vehicle charging stations in Chicago and elsewhere was sentenced Friday to two years in prison.
Timothy Mason pleaded guilty in May to fraudulently getting at least $1 million in government grants for the failed green initiative.
Mason faced more than four years in prison for one count of wire fraud.
U.S. District Judge Sharon Johnson Coleman also gave him one year of supervised release and 60 hours of community service to be performed with the homeless. He’s expected to surrender early next year, giving him time to visit his mother, who is 85 and in poor health in Alabama. Restitution will be determined later.
After the sentencing proceedings, which lasted more than two-and-a-half hours, Mason’s lawyer, Patrick Blegen, said they’re discussing whether to appeal the sentence.
In his 22-page plea agreement with prosecutors, Mason, former president of Los Angeles-based 350Green LLC, admitted he fraudulently got federal grants for electric-car charging station programs. The contract signed with Chicago in October 2010 provided the company with $1.9 million in grants from the Department of Energy under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. Under that deal, 350Green was required to provide $6.8 million of its own funds to complete the project but failed to do so, court records show.
According to the plea, after 350Green ran into financial trouble in 2011, Mason began telling workers to submit false financial information to Chicago and other cities to make it appear the company was on “solid financial footing.”
Mason told one worker to send copies of checks to the city to make it appear that subcontractors had been paid when in fact the checks had never been sent, according to the plea. The scheme began to unravel after subcontractors began to complain they were not getting paid.
Mason’s lawyer said during sentencing that his client wasn’t planning to “run off with other people’s money.”
These “were not the actions of a con man or thief,” Blegen said.
But the judge said what Mason committed was fraud “any way you cut it.”
Victims, she said, included governments, taxpayers, subcontractors and the environmental-greening movement itself.
Chances that Mason, 59, would commit another fraud, however, are “slim to none,” she said.
Mason apologized to several parties in the court, from a Chicago official to family members. He said he has learned that it’s OK to fail as long as a dream is pursued honestly and ethically.
According to recently filed court documents, the probation office and the government found that his fraud caused intended losses of about $1.5 million, but Mason estimates the losses at around $1 million.
Touted with fanfare by city officials and then-Gov. Pat Quinn at the 2011 Chicago Auto Show, the planned network of charging stations for electric vehicles was pitched to be the best and largest in the country. Ford and Nissan moved up the rollout of their electric cars to the Chicago market because of the 350Green project.
Mason has said the expiration of the Alternative Fuel Vehicle Refueling Property Credit at the end of 2011 sank the project’s financing. He said the company counted on the tax credit for about half the project’s funding. The tax credit was extended in 2013, at which point, Mason said, it was too late. By the spring of 2013, about 169 of the 280 charging stations 350Green promised were installed, but many did not work.
byerak@chicagotribune.com
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