Racketeering is a word often associated with mobsters and mayhem.
For 47 years, the federal Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act — commonly known as RICO — has been used to prosecute organized-crime figures and gang leaders. RICO cases have taken down members of the Gambino crime family and the Chicago Outfit. The Catholic Church was sued under RICO for allegedly allowing priests to molest children.
Now, two men on the side of the law — both district attorneys — are dealing with their own RICO case. And they’re not alone. Their wives and several court employees find themselves the defendants in a civil RICO lawsuit filed in Wake County by a former colleague.
On Feb. 21, Debra Halbrook filed a lawsuit in which she alleges that she was fired for reporting to the State Bureau of Investigation that the district attorneys in Person, Caswell and Rockingham counties — Wallace Bradsher and Craig Blitzer — were scheming to place each other’s wives on their payrolls to collect more than $100,000 combined in annual and unearned salaries. Halbrook’s report also launched an SBI investigation.
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The crux of Halbrook’s lawsuit focuses on the ramifications of coming forward to the SBI and reporting the alleged scheme. However, Halbrook is suing each person named in their individual capacities under the state’s RICO act, stating that she was an injured victim who lost wages because of a criminal scheme.
RICO cases are rare in North Carolina. Federal records show 171 civil and criminal cases combined in the state’s history.
In the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of North Carolina, which includes federal cases in Rockingham, Person and Caswell counties, there have been 28 civil RICO cases filed.
Chief Assistant District Attorney Howard Neumann said he cannot recall a civil RICO case in Guilford County.
Criminal charges are reserved for the federal court system, and since 1970 in the U.S. Middle District Court, there have been three RICO cases filed. It’s unclear what happened in two of those instances. Court documents have been sealed. The other case involved eight members of the Latin Kings, including their leader, Jorge Peter Cornell, who is serving 28 years in federal prison.
The RICO statute became law on Oct. 15, 1970, during the Nixon administration. Its intent was to eliminate organized crime, such as the Mafia, but its wording was broad enough to capture other criminals.
There are 27 federal crimes and eight state crimes a person can commit that fall under the RICO act — bribery, embezzlement of union funds, money laundering, mail fraud, wire fraud, extortion, prostitution and murder.
Racketeering
North Carolina lawmakers in 1985 created their own Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations law that allows an innocent person to sue for three times the damage incurred from racketeering. The law provides legal remedies for citizens such as Halbrook, who believe they personally were damaged as an innocent party because of their proximity to a RICO violation.
“The purpose of North Carolina’s civil RICO law is simple: to protect innocent people who are harmed as the result of criminal or fraudulent schemes,” said Drew Erteschik, an attorney in Raleigh representing Halbrook.
None of the attorneys representing defendants in the lawsuit returned a request from the News & Record seeking comment.
This law defines a racketeering activity as a “means to commit, to attempt to commit, or to solicit, coerce, or intimidate another person to commit an act or acts” that fall under the federal RICO law.
To do so, the plaintiff must prove a pattern in which at least two instances of racketeering occurred.
In Halbrook’s case, she alleges that she was coerced, intimidated, extorted and retaliated against as a means to commit and then cover up a financial scheme to collect taxpayers’ money.
The allegations
Halbrook had worked as a victim-witness legal assistant in the Caswell County District Attorney’s office for nearly 20 years when she was fired. She believes her boss, Bradsher, learned she reported him and Blitzer to the SBI for what the lawsuit calls the “Bradsher-Blitzer ‘Hire My Wife’ scheme.”
Initially, both wives worked for their husbands, making more than $45,000 each. In 2015, when the N.C. Administrative Office of the Courts learned about the wives’ employment, officials notified the district attorneys that hiring their spouses violated state law.
Emails obtained through a public records request state that both men and AOC officials worked together to have the wives swap jobs and salaries.
Cindy Blitzer went from a legal assistant of 12 days to an investigator, making $48,000.
Pamela Bradsher was demoted from investigator to legal assistant, making $46,900.
The lawsuit states that Halbrook noticed neither wife was working very often in her new role.
Each county records data from cardswipe access points around the courthouse, showing when a card-holding employee entered the building. Those records indicate that Pamela Bradsher was in the Rockingham County Courthouse 36 out of the 156 days business days in which she was employed there. Cindy Blitzer never was granted keycard access to enter the courthouse in Wallace Bradsher’s district, which means if she came to work, she would have had to stand in a security line with the general public.
Halbrook alleges that Blitzer worked fewer than five days per year.
Cindy Blitzer continued working under Wallace Bradsher until Oct. 25, 2016, just days before the news broke about the SBI investigation. Halbrook alleges in the lawsuit that Wallace Bradsher fired Cindy Blitzer after he “feigned discovery” that she was not working full-time.
Pamela Bradsher worked less than a year under Craig Blitzer, resigning on Aug. 18, 2015. Halbrook said in her suit that the resignation came quickly after she questioned her boss about Cindy Blitzer’s employment, and she believes it was a means to cover up any criminal activity.
Halbrook also stated in a sworn affidavit that she approached her supervisors — Administrative Assistant Gayle Peed, former Chief Assistant District Attorney and current District Court Judge John “J.” Stultz and Wallace Bradsher — and asked why Cindy Blitzer was on the payroll. She was met with various forms of “don’t worry about it.”
Halbrook said she became sufficiently concerned to go to authorities when she spotted Stultz’s accessing the state’s payroll system, a privilege only granted to Peed in that office.
Halbrook said she first reported what she saw to Peed and then confronted Stultz, who told her not to worry about Cindy Blitzer, whose name had not been mentioned in the conversation.
That’s when, she said, she began to suspect a criminal conspiracy.
Software sell
Halbrook went to authorities in June 2016, and the following month Superior Court Judge Joe Crosswhite ordered an investigation.
Two months later, Bradsher moved Halbrook out of Yanceyville, the Caswell County office where she had spent almost 20 years, to his Roxboro office in Person County about 22 miles away.
The lawsuit states that Bradsher told Halbrook if she wanted to return to Caswell, she needed to convince her husband, Caswell County Chief Deputy Sheriff Scott Halbrook, to have Sheriff Michael Welch adopt a digitally cataloged discovery system that was being used in Rockingham County.
Halbrook stated she believed Bradsher wanted to begin using the software in Caswell County as a means to cover up the crimes. It would help explain why some of the shared employees weren’t working in the proper courthouses.
Tyler Henderson, a then-former and later rehired legal assistant for Wallace Bradsher, had gone to work for Craig Blitzer in August 2015 after Pamela Bradsher resigned.This happened shortly after Halbrook first questioned Wallace Bradsher about Cindy Blitzer’s employment.
Wallace Bradsher told his staff that Henderson was working in Rockingham to learn about the software and then to train other employees. County records show Henderson also did not possess a keycard to the Rockingham County Courthouse.
But instead of coercing her husband into using this new software, Halbrook told her husband her suspicions.
Things began getting out of hand in November 2016, the lawsuit states.
Attitudes
Court documents accuse Wallace Bradsher of calling Halbrook into a conference room with Assistant District Attorney Hollie McAdams and Senior Assistant District Attorney LuAnn Martin.
The lawsuit states that Bradsher was breathing heavily and irate. He accused Halbrook of being disloyal and said he knew she had met with Yanceyville-based attorney Lee Farmer, who also is representing Halbrook in her lawsuit. The lawsuit stated Bradsher and Martin demanded to know what she and Farmer discussed.
Halbrook said in her affidavit that she knew discussing the conversation would reveal she had gone to the SBI, so she refused to answer. She did confirm that Farmer was her attorney. That knowledge, court records state, made the district attorney angrier.
Members of the SBI had met with Bradsher’s staff in the summer of 2016, and Bradsher allegedly wanted to know more about Halbrook’s conversation with the agents.
Halbrook states that Bradsher then informed her she was the only member of his staff not to reveal the conversation she had with the SBI.
The next day, Bradsher relocated Halbrook to a new workplace: a desk in a storage space between two filing cabinets, court records state.
In December, Wallace Bradsher’s attitude towards Halbrook changed. He became kind. He gave her an unspecified merit bonus that only is awarded to one employee a year.
Halbrook stated that she didn’t trust Bradsher’s about face.
That didn’t last long, either.
No deal, no job
On Jan. 11, Halbrook said she noticed Bradsher’s taking a call in the conference room and looking increasingly upset.
Sheriff Welch had called and rejected Bradsher’s request to adopt the new software.
Minutes later, Bradsher, shaking and red-faced, called Halbrook into Peed’s office and fired her.
Halbrook, 54, was months shy of 20 years as a judicial employee, which would have entitled her to a pension and lifelong health care.
“As a result of the RICO defendants’ conduct, Ms. Halbrook lost her job, her ability to earn a living, and her retirement, health and other benefits,” the lawsuit states.
Stating the case
The Bradshers and Blitzers and Stultz, Peed and Martin are being sued in their individual capacities under the RICO act.
The lawsuit asserts a serious connection between the district attorneys’ alleged attempt to steal the state’s money and a cover up to avoid giving the money back or losing their jobs.
Under federal laws, the lawsuit alleges RICO violations that include retaliating against an employee who provides evidence of fraud to a government agency, conspiring to retaliate against employees who provide evidence of fraud to a government agency, obstruction of justice, obstruction of criminal investigations, obstruction of state or local law enforcement, tampering with a witness or informant, bribery, mail fraud, wire fraud, retaliating against a witness or informant and racketeering.
Under state laws, the lawsuit alleges RICO violations that include obtaining property by false pretense, embezzlement of funds by public officers, blackmailing, extortion, false reports to law enforcement agencies or officers, intimidating or interfering with witnesses, buying or selling offices, willfully failing to discharge duties, failing to make reports and discharge of duties relating to public officers or employees benefiting from public contracts, communicating threats, influencing agents and servants in violating duties owed employees, subornation of perjury, and altering, destroying or stealing evidence of criminal conduct.
Halbrook filed her lawsuit despite the ongoing investigation, and after she did, Wake County District Attorney Lorrin Freeman adopted the SBI’s case from Crosswhite.
The investigation is ongoing. A judge granted Freeman’s office permission to execute search warrants in late March and on April 6 to gather more evidence for the case. The search warrants are sealed by a judge, but they focus on bank records and an electronic device, according to the motion to seal the warrants.
Craig Blitzer resigned as district attorney on March 10, just two days after the SBI raided his office in search for evidence, including a computer in the district attorney’s possession.
“Civil RICO lawsuits are often filed before a prosecutor brings charges in a criminal case,” Erteschik said. “ Sometimes, they are even the catalyst for a criminal prosecution. Here, the SBI collected evidence in June of 2016, but eight months later, no one in Caswell, Person, or Rockingham counties had been indicted or removed from public office.
“Within 48 hours of Debbie’s lawsuit, however, Wake County District Attorney Lorrin Freeman — to her great credit — took over the SBI’s investigation and exercised jurisdiction to prosecute the case here in Wake County.”
It’s not clear if the people named in the lawsuit will face criminal racketeering charges, which would need prior approval from the U.S. Department of Justice. The lawsuit alleges that the FBI has an active investigation into the two district attorney’s offices, but FBI officials said they couldn’t confirm or deny an investigation.
