Former NC housing director sentenced to prison for bid-rigging, kickbacks scheme
The former director of the Chatham County Housing Authority was sentenced to 2 1/2 years in prison Wednesday for a bid-rigging scheme that awarded contracts to friends and relatives and paid out over $200,000 for jobs that in some cases were never done.
Joanna Johnson Davis, 65, of Durham, pleaded guilty to conspiring to commit wire fraud.
Davis was ordered to pay $194,136 in restitution and will be placed under supervised release for two years after she gets out of prison, according to a U.S. Department of Justice news release.
Davis had initially pleaded not guilty after she and three others were arrested last year by U.S. Marshals in Greensboro and taken into federal custody. A fourth person also was charged in the case.
The prosecution’s evidence stretched 8,000-plus pages “not including voluminous bank record data and Excel files,” The News & Observer reported last year.
Davis was employed as the housing authority’s director from 2012 until after her arrest in 2023.
How prosecutors say the scheme worked
The Chatham County Housing Authority receives funding from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development.
That funding includes money for the Housing Choice Voucher Program, often called Section 8, which helps low-income families, the elderly, and people with disabilities find safe and sanitary housing on the private market, according to the release.
Davis and others engaged in a ”bid-rigging, no-work jobs conspiracy” between 2016 and 2020 while she led the housing authority, the release stated.
Prosecutors said between 2016 and 2020 Davis steered contracts to 13 friends and relatives by creating false bids to “compete” with them.
She and co-conspirators used stolen identities and company letterhead of actual people and businesses to make the fake bids look real, according to the release.
“Davis would then select the bid proposal submitted by her friend or family member as the winner and award the CCHA contract to that individual, knowing there had been no assessment of ‘reasonable’ cost, and regardless of whether that friend or family member was qualified to perform the contracted work,” the release stated.
“Often, no work at all was performed under these contracts,” and Davis received kickbacks from those receiving the contracts., it stated.
Others sentenced in case
Three of Davis’s co-conspirators were sentenced last year:
▪ Clintess Roberta Barrett-Johnson, 55, of Durham, pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy to commit wire fraud and was sentenced in November to four years of probation and ordered to pay $57,179 in restitution.
▪ Mi’chelle Necole Bell-Johnson, 34, of Charlotte, pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy to commit wire fraud and was sentenced in September to three years of probation and ordered to pay $83,977 in restitution.
▪ Candace Agatha Brunson-Poole pleaded guilty in April to theft of less than $1,000 in government funds. She was sentenced to one year of probation and ordered to pay a $25 special assessment fee, a $500 fine and $929 in restitution.
Charges against a fourth defendant, Robert Johnson Jr., were dismissed. Both he and Bell-Johnson are related to Davis, court records showed. Davis, Barrett-Johnson and Brunson-Poole are former employees of the Durham Housing Authority.
NC Reality Check is an N&O series holding those in power accountable and shining a light on public issues that affect the Triangle or North Carolina. Have a suggestion for a future story? Email realitycheck@newsobserver.com
This story was originally published February 8, 2024 at 7:58 AM.