Federal prosecutors say former Rochester Housing Authority official Janice White has pleaded guilty to charges of conspiracy to commit wire fraud.
The 60-year-old Rochester woman was Executive Secretary for the RHA from 2012 to 2020. She along with RHA Chair George Moses were arrested on charges of setting up a fake heating and cooling contractor to skim money from the agency through fake contracts.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Richard A. Resnick, who is handling the case, said the authority formed the Rochester Housing Charities, which received assistance from the federal government to support low income people with housing. White started a company in 2018 called HJJ Property Development, which contracted to do heating and air conditioning work for the RHC and RHA. But Resnick says White and Moses consipired between March, 2018 and February, 2019 to defraud the authority by faking invoices to say HJJ was providing services to the RHC which it was not. They pocketed the money instead.
Between March and August 2018, RHC was defrauded into paying HJJ Property $87,069.
Sentencing is scheduled for January 24, 2022, before Judge Wolford.