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Compliance April 30, 2007
NJ Contractor President Sent to Prison for Stealing Pension Funds
April 30, 2007 (PLANSPONSOR.com) - The president of
a Millstone Township, New Jersey-based contracting company
was sentenced to five years in state prison for failing to
deposit more than $600,000 of withheld employee wages into
his employees' pension fund, the Asbury Park Press
reported.
Reported by Adrien Martin
State Superior Court Judge Patricia DelBueno Cleary ordered Frank Knight – the sole shareholder of Knight Contracting and the trustee of the company’s pension fund – to pay $560,770 in restitution to his employees’ pension plan after a trial court jury convicted him of stealing from the fund.
Knight set up the pension program in 1999.
According to the newspaper, the prosecutor’s office and the U.S. Department of Labor received complaints in 2004 from several current and former employees of the company that Knight had not been depositing the money. Both entities launched an investigation and confirmed that Knight had not been depositing money into the pension fund between July 2002 and December 2003, which amounted to more than $600,000 in employee wages.
Since then, Knight gave back some of the money, but the pension fund still remains more than $560,000 underfunded.