By KERA News & Wire Services
Dallas, TX – The Texas Workforce Commission says 12 people have pleaded guilty to fraudulently receiving unemployment benefits.
The punishments announced Monday ranged from two-plus years in prison to probation. Each defendant was ordered to pay restitution ranging from $9,100 to $120. The commission says it paid $56,928 from a total of $80,433 in 25 fraudulent claims.
The defendants pleaded guilty to mail fraud or theft of public money.
The convictions came from an investigation into mail fraud and identity theft in the Camp County area of east Texsa, about 130 miles east of Dallas.
Dallas-area man sentenced in drilling scheme
A Dallas-area man has been sentenced to 17 1/2 years in prison and ordered to repay nearly $18 million after pleading guilty to fraud in an oil and natural gas drilling scheme.
U.S. Attorney John M. Bales said Monday that 50-year-old Michael Eugene Dannelly of Denton was sentenced in federal court last week on a charge of mail fraud.
Authorities allege that Dannelly bilked investors out of nearly $17.7 million that they thought was being used to drill oil and natural gas wells in Texas and Oklahoma. Instead, authorities say Dannelly used the money mostly for personal expenses, including $5.3 million on gambling at two Louisiana casinos.
Dannelly pleaded guilty in August, four months after he was indicted.
Car slams into Dallas transit bus; 3 hurt
Three people were hurt, including one who's been hospitalized, after a car slammed into the side of a Dallas transit bus, sending it careening into a column fronting a new office building.
A spokesman for Dallas Area Rapid Transit, which operates the Dallas-area bus and commuter rail system, says the worst injury from the 4 p.m. Monday crash was an open fracture to a woman's right leg. The other two injuries were treated at the scene.
DART spokesman Morgan Lyons says the bus was traveling in the westbound frontage road of Woodall Rogers Freeway - Spur 366 - when a car southbound on Olive Street ran a red light and slammed into its side. The impact sent the bus through a traffic-light standard and into the building column.
Big Guilty
A Denton man is going to prison for almost 17 years after pleading guilty to a multi-million dollar oil and gas scheme. Prosecutors say 50 year old Michael Eugene Dannelly bilked investors out of almost 18 million dollars. He's been ordered to pay it back.
Court records say the money was not used to drill oil and gas wells in Texas and Oklahoma, as Dannelly claimed. Instead, Dannelly used most of it for personal expenses, including more than five million in gambling expenses at two Shreveport casinos.