UPDATED: Sheriff of Page County faces 22 counts

BY REX BOWMAN
Media General News Service
Published: October 24, 2008

Page County’s sheriff was arrested Thursday at his Luray home and charged with diverting $100,000 in public money into his private accounts, putting jail inmates to work for him and pocketing bribes from a cockfighting operation.

In a 22-count federal indictment, Sheriff Daniel W. Presgraves, named rural Page’s Citizen of the Year in 2006, also is accused of sexually harassing and sexually assaulting 12 of his female employees, and obstruction of an investigation.

The charges carry a maximum prison sentence of 300 years.

“It’s a very sad day when we have to stand before you to report that a federal grand jury has found sufficient cause to return an indictment against an elected public official,“ Julia C. Dudley, acting U.S. attorney for the Western District of Virginia, said at a news conference in Charlottesville.

“Such action signals a violation of what we all hold sacred — the trust we put in our elected officials to do on a daily basis what is just, proper and lawful.“

A federal magistrate released Presgraves from custody yesterday afternoon on a $50,000 bond, ordering him not to talk to anyone in the sheriff’s department while he awaits trial.

“He’s still technically the sheriff, but he’s got no responsibilities,“ said Thomas J. Bondurant Jr., criminal chief in the U.S. attorney’s Roanoke office.

Presgraves, 46, has been sheriff since Jan. 1, 2000, and last year he handily beat three opponents to win re-election as a Republican. He has been a fixture of law enforcement in the Shenandoah Valley since 1983, when he became a patrolman in the Luray Police Department.

After two years there, he became an agent with the Virginia Alcoholic Beverage Control Board, where he worked until he won election as sheriff in November 1999.

The indictment, handed up by an Abingdon grand jury Wednesday and unsealed Thursday, held little surprise for residents of Page, who knew as early as last spring that the sheriff was under investigation, said Ira C. “Pud” Gochenour Jr., who ran as a Democrat last year against Presgraves.

“I can only say good things about him,“ said Gochenour, who works in the Luray Police Department. “He’s the guy who got me into law enforcement.“

Prosecutors said the investigation into Presgraves began when an informant suggested the sheriff was taking bribes from the Little Boxwood cockfighting pit in return for staying quiet about the illegal operation.

The operators of the pit, located in Kite Hollow, previously have been charged with cockfighting-related crimes. Some have pleaded guilty, and one awaits trial.

Following up on the informant’s tip, a federal agent posed as a prospective buyer of the pit and was told he could pay $500 to Presgraves through an intermediary and the sheriff would turn a blind eye to the operation, prosecutors said.

Presgraves could not be reached for comment yesterday. But in September, when the cockfighting operators were indicted, he released a statement in which he called the $500 a lawful campaign contribution.

The contribution, he added, was reported properly to the Virginia State Board of Elections “for the public and entire world to see.“

In the course of the federal investigation, Dudley said, agents unearthed what she called a “pattern of sexual assault, sexual harassment, money laundering, witness intimidation, acts of dishonesty and obstruction of justice.“

Additionally, the sheriff is accused of accepting cash, gift cards, and the use of heavy machinery and free labor for personal projects from an unnamed corporation in exchange for tipping off corporate officers about any other agency’s investigation.

The bribes started coming almost as soon as Presgraves became sheriff, and he tried to intimidate witnesses into not telling federal investigators about them, prosecutors said.

The indictment also says that, from 2001 to 2004, Presgraves deposited more than $100,000 in cash into his personal checking accounts, though the money belonged to the public and should have gone to the county treasurer’s office.

Meanwhile, according to the indictment, Presgraves used inmates of the Page County Jail to perform work for him at his house and at properties in which his family members held an interest, and he persuaded officials with the state prison agency to let him keep some of those inmates though they were supposed to be transferred elsewhere.