October 15, 2011
Texas

State employee, exec accused of wind farm fraud

By Tony Plohetski, AMERICAN-STATESMAN STAFF, www.statesman.com 14 October 2011

Authorities on Friday arrested and charged a state comptroller’s employee and a Jonestown man with deceiving the government to obtain federal grants.

Charles Anthony Malouff, 53, and Mary Jo Woodall, 55, are each charged with securing execution of a document by deception, a first-degree felony for which they face up to life in prison if convicted.

Woodall was booked into the Williamson County Jail on Tuesday and released the same day on $100,000 bail, court records show. Malouff remained in the Travis County Jail on Friday on $100,000 bail.

An arrest affidavit said that Malouff and Woodall are longtime friends and that Woodall, a state employee, was supervising the distribution of a grant for which Malouff was applying. Malouff, the founder of CM Energies and owner of CM Energies International, had said in the application that he would use $2 million of federal stimulus money to help build about 20 wind turbines in the city of Jonestown, according to an arrest affidavit.

However, the affidavit said that witnesses reported that the company could not produce the wind turbine technology and that the technology Malouff was promoting “did not exist.”

The affidavit said that Malouff also has a federal conviction and got his daughter to sign documents stating she was the company’s president in order to obtain funds.

A Travis County sheriff’s deputy who had worked for the company last year became concerned about the company’s application and the project and alerted authorities, the affidavit said.

Calls to Malouff and Woodall’s lawyers were not returned Friday night.

URL to article:  https://www.wind-watch.org/news/2011/10/15/state-employee-exec-accused-of-wind-farm-fraud/