Misdemeanor plea ends 13-year probe of Northeast Florida construction industry

March 15, 2011

By Paul Pinkham

Thirteen years ago, the IRS began investigating fraud, money laundering and the use of illegal aliens in Northeast Florida's construction industry.

Featuring a rogue agent, murder-for-hire and comparisons to The Sopranos, the probe ultimately netted 10 convictions, most relatively minor compared with the $18 million conspiracy agents once described.

Tuesday, the case ended with a misdemeanor plea by the last charged defendant. Once indicted for tax fraud, the Middleburg house framer pleaded guilty to the lesser charge of helping illegal aliens avoid detection by subcontracting with companies that employed them and paying them in cash from 1998 to 2001.

Thomas Lee Ruhl, 45, faces a maximum three months behind bars.

Ruhl, former owner of Coastal Construction in Jacksonville, was indicted in 2007 but the indictment remained sealed until last month when he and federal prosecutors worked out the plea. U.S. Magistrate Monte Richardson didn't schedule a sentencing date.

It was a quiet end to a case that began with major drama. It first made headlines in 2000 when a state insurance investigator participating in the undercover investigation shot and robbed a key target, leaving him for dead on a secluded Riverside street.

Arthur Picklo and other agents had just watched framer Guadalupe Fausto exchange a check for $20,000 cash in Murray Hill. Picklo, 50, followed him and shot him in the head. Though acquitted in state court, he was convicted in federal court and sentenced to 40 years in prison after Fausto became a government witness.

An IRS agent testified in Picklo's trial that publicity surrounding the case essentially ended the probe, which revolved around contractors who hired illegal aliens but claimed the work was done by subcontractors. Prosecutors said the subcontractors were sham companies that had no employees but were set up to cash checks from the framers, keep a fee and use the rest to pay crew leaders in untraceable cash.

Ruhl's 2007 tax fraud indictment said Coastal Construction was one of the sham companies. The scam helped the contractors avoid payroll taxes and workers compensation.

More publicity came a year later when another target, Neptune Beach check-casher Robert West, paid an undercover officer $10,000 to kill a state workers compensation investigator and feed her body to alligators. The Florida Department of Law Enforcement recorded conversations in which West told an informant he wanted the agent dead because she was costing him money by visiting construction sites where undocumented aliens worked.

"You got a little more Tony Soprano in you than I do," the informant said.

"I'd hate to have to do it, but, hey, that versus poor? Hmm. Not really difficult to choose," West replied. "We just need a ... chainsaw. Gators will be happy."

West, 51, was sentenced to eight years in prison on the attempted murder-for-hire charge and admitted cashing $4 million in checks for building subcontractors. He is awaiting deportation to Canada.

Ruhl's original indictment says he used West's check-cashing company to deposit funds to be available for cashing for framing contractors. The indictment charged him with withdrawing $95,000 in 2002 to cash checks for contractors.

Federal prosecutors replaced the indictment last month with the misdemeanor charge Ruhl pleaded guilty to Tuesday, and the fraud charges were dismissed.

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