SC federal prosecutors recommend probation for five Pinson co-conspirators

If you cooperate, we’ll treat you well.

If not – prison.

That’s the message South Carolina federal prosecutors are sending to co-conspirators in one of the state’s major public corruption cases involving former S.C. State University board chair Jonathan Pinson.

Prosecutors, in papers filed late Monday and in recent weeks, recommended probation for five co-conspirators who cooperated in the racketeering case against Pinson.

Four of the five – Lance Wright, Robert “Tony” Williams, Phil Mims and Michael Bartley – are expected to be sentenced Tuesday in Charleston by U.S. Judge David Norton. A sentencing date for the fifth, Richard Zahn, has not been set.

The four being sentenced Tuesday cooperated with the government in its investigation and testified against Pinson at his trial last summer.

That included the key informant in that case, Wright, who agreed to be secretly wired to record conversations and did so on 33 separate occasions, according to court filings.

He was debriefed by agents 66 times over several years, the court filings said.

“As a result of information provided by Wright,” agents applied for wiretaps and learned about “other crimes not previously known to the government,” prosecutors’ papers said.

Last summer a federal jury found Pinson, once a political ally and former business partner of Columbia Mayor Steve Benjamin, guilty of 29 of 45 felony counts revolving around racketeering and public corruption. Norton sentenced him to five years, but he is appealing the verdict and sentence.

The specific crimes Pinson was found guilty of included racketeering, or being part of an ongoing criminal enterprise engaged in crimes like money laundering, theft of federal funds, wire fraud, bribery and extortion.

Among those being sentenced Tuesday:

▪  Bartley, former S.C. State police chief, has pleaded guilty to a federal conspiracy charge for agreeing to accept a payoff of $30,000 and an all-terrain vehicle in exchange for being part of a Pinson kickback scheme at the university.

▪  Wright, of Lexington, a former Pinson associate and S.C. State board member, pleaded guilty to mail fraud and bank fraud.

▪  Williams, of Florida, pleaded guilty to various conspiracy charges involving the Village at River’s Edge and other projects.

▪  Mims, of Lexington, pleaded guilty to conspiring to get sizable loans from banks for building projects in Marion County and in the Columbia area, and diverting the money to illegal uses, according to federal charges.

Zahn, a Florida developer who will be sentenced later, pleaded guilty to participating in a kickback scheme in which he tried to sell S.C. State 121 acres of land he owns near the university. That land, called Sportsman’s Retreat, was pitched to the school as a possible site for a university conference center. Zahn was to give Pinson a $90,000 Porsche Cayenne SUV in return for Pinson’s help in getting the university to buy the Zahn land for $2.8 million. Federal agents stepped in before the land was sold.

Ed Givens of Columbia last year was given six months’ probation. Givens, a conspirator in two of Pinson’s schemes while Givens served as chief counsel for S.C. State, pleaded guilty to misprision, or concealment, of a felony. He received probation for testifying against Pinson. Givens lost his law license temporarily.

This story was originally published July 20, 2015 at 9:43 PM.