Accused Former Ross Valley Sanitary District GM Delays Plea

Former Ross Valley Sanitary District general manager Brett Richards delayed entering a plea in Marin County Superior Court Tuesday morning on charges of embezzlement, money laundering and misappropriation of public funds.

Richards, 45, is accused of diverting $350,000 in public money loaned to him for housing, never using it for housing, and then fleeing the country several months ago. Richards was arrested in the Philippines on July 11 and brought back to Marin over the weekend and booked into Marin County Jail.

According to the Marin County Superior Court clerk's office, Richards' attorney Jai Gohel requested more time before his client enters a plea. Richards is expected to enter a plea in the case at 8:30 a.m. Friday in Courtroom F.

The Philippine Bureau of Immigration and the Philippine National Police arrested Richards in Moalboal, a municipality in Cebu, Philippines. After his arrest, he was temporarily housed in Cebu City before he was transported to the Philippine Bureau of Immigration detention-processing center in Manilla.

Richards, whose whereabouts had been unknown since June 2012, was sought on a $1 million warrant surrounding a $350,000 housing loan he received from the district, allegedly inappropriately. 

An eight-month investigation determined Richards moved the money through a series of bank accounts and never used the money as intended, Marin District Attorney Ed Berberian said. Shortly before the investigation began, Richards resigned his position with the Ross Valley Sanitary District and left the Bay Area, Berberian said.

The Marin District Attorney's Office requested the FBI to issue and Unlawful Flight to Avoid Prosecution warrant under the provisions of the Federal Fugitive Felon Act, Berberian said.

A federal complaint was filed on April 10 and a warrant was issued for Richards' arrest, Berberian said.

The warrant authorized the FBI to work with Philippine law enforcement authorities to execute the outstanding criminal warrants, Berberian said.

There is no evidence other Ross Valley Sanitary District employees or elected board members were complicit in the Richards' alleged illegal actions, Berberian said.

San Anselmo Town Councilman Ford Greene, a defense attorney who attended the hearing, told the Marin Independent Journal that Richards had a case to make because Richards' housing loan lacked security provisions.

"Based on the decisions of the Ross Valley board, he probably has a pretty defensible case," Greene told the paper.

In September 2012, Richards was living off the radar but started publishing posts on the blog Ross Valley Sewer Truth. He told Patch at the time that he had been thinking about creating the blog for a while.

The blog, which has since been taken down, outlined, in first person, how Richards became the general manager for the RVSD in 2008 with a $197,000 annual salary. The blog never mentioned Richards’ name, but did call out several local leaders and was full of jabs at the Central Marin Sanitation Agency and other organizations, including the city of San Rafael.

Officials with the 113-year-old Ross Valley Sanitary District, which collects wastewater from Fairfax, San Anselmo, Ross, Kentfield, Greenbrae and Larkspur, picked a new interim general manager in January 2013.

Finding an interim general manager took nearly six months for the sanitary district, which didn’t hire a head hunting consulting firm for the search.

–Bay City News Service contributed to this report. Copyright © 2013 by Bay City News, Inc. – Republication, Rebroadcast or any other Reuse without the express written consent of Bay City News, Inc. is prohibited.