By Naeisha Rose
On Day Two of City Councilman Ruben Wills’ (D-Jamaica) corruption trial, a witness for the prosecution testified he had no idea he was listed as the executive director of a charity run by the lawmaker.
Wills faces 12 charges of fraud, falsifying business records and grand larceny, and is accused of using a combined $30,500 from the city and the state for personal shopping sprees and to give to his goddaughter, Michelle Davis. The money was supposed to go to his not-for-profit, New York 4 Life, as well as translation services for his 2010 election campaign, according to New York State Attorney General Eric Schneiderman, whose office is trying the case in Queens Supreme Court.
Shawn Garrick told the jury he had never received a letter from a state agency in 2011 asking for an accounting of the $33,000 that New York 4 Life had received from the state, The New York Times reported. Garrick said he did not know he was listed as the executive director and had never attended a meeting of the charity’s board. The letter was mailed to the wrong address
Wills set up the charity in 2006 to honor single mothers, according to an indictment, and was later expanded to honor single fathers, tackle childhood obesity, and to adopt a strip to clean, according to Assistant Attorney General Travis Hill and fellow prosecutor John Chiarro.
Prosecutors called Davis, a LaGuardia Community College student from Ozone Park, to the witness stand because she received checks on Sept. 1, 2010 and Oct. 3, 2010 totaling $265 for data entry work on Wills’ obesity campaign for the charity, according to the New York Post.
The state Office of Children and Family Services, the agency that gave his charity $33,000, only has an account for a mother’s luncheon and no records of the other events, according to Hill.
Davis, who was questioned by Hill about her work for NY 4 Life, said she had no clue about the charity, never worked for it and didn’t know that the checks she cashed were from the organization, the Post reported.
“I’ve never heard of New York 4 Life,” Davis said.
Davis did confirm to Hill that she did campaign work for Wills’ election, but the memo field for the first check is blank and the second check was for the “data entry obesity campaign,” according to the Post.
Kevin O’Donnell, Wills’ defense attorney, claimed that Davis has a faulty memory from an event that occurred seven years ago, the Post said.
“She clearly remembered the campaign work, but she didn’t remember the work that she cashed the checks for,” O’Donnell said.
O’Donnell later tried to portray Wills as a rookie politician with poor financing skills and said that the other events did occur but lacked a paper trail, according to the Times.
“Poor bookkeeping doesn’t equate to criminal activity,” O’Donnell said.
Wills was still optimistic about beating his charges, according to the NY Post.
“Nobody can say I stole anything,” Wills said. “Not one of them can say I did something wrong.”
Reach reporter Naeisha Rose by e-mail at nrose
