SIX jurors and two alternates were selected Monday from a 150-person jury pool for the trial of former Chief of Parole Nick M. Reyes and Chuilian “Scott” Fu, owner of F&S Corporation. The two were charged with conspiracy to commit misconduct in public office, conspiracy to commit theft by deception, and theft by deception. They have denied the charges.
In his opening statement to the jury, attorney Joaquin Torres, who represents Reyes, said: “The government [prosecution] wants you to believe Mr. Fu and Mr. Reyes somehow planned to do something…to steal $9,987.80 from the government.”
“Mr. Fu has been here for 20 some years, a productive person in the community. They want you to believe that this is what Mr. Fu and Mr. Reyes did. But to be honest here, it’s the government that has benefitted…not Mr. Reyes and Mr. Fu,” Torres said.
“Mr. Fu spent thousands of dollars repairing this pala-pala [patio extension]. He has not gotten paid for that repair…but they are charging him for the work that has to happen. I’m sure the prosecution did not notice when they filed this case [that] there were two projects. One…was completely done, and defendants are not contesting that the pala-pala was made by parolees. But there was another one, an extension,” Torres added.
Attorney Anthony Aguon, who represents Fu, said: “The prosecution’s theory is that Scott [Fu] and Nick conspired to steal from the government by getting paid for a pala-pala that was built by parolees. But the evidence will show that’s not what happened. Nick, as the chief of parole, made it a rule to fix the dilapidated parole office so that his staff could work in a safe and usable space. He asked Scott to do some repairs and separately build a new pala-pala. Scott made the repairs and gave his [price] quote for the pala-pala, but he never got a go-ahead with the government office. Next, you’ll hear from Nick, how he made a mistake, [and] processed the quote for the repair work that Scott did, and it was a mistake; he admitted it. But a mistake is not a crime.”
According to Aguon, “If we started charging every government employee for the mistakes they made, the line will go out the courtroom door and all the way up to [Capital] Hill. And good civil servants will be afraid to do their jobs. They will be flooded with charges, and no one will work for the government.”
In his opening statement, the prosecutor, Assistant Attorney General James Robert Kingman, said, “We’re dealing with a simple chain of events that should be easy to explain once you see them laid out in front of you.”
He said “Nick Reyes, in the summer of 2022, instructed parolees to construct an extension to the Board of Parole building, a patio — a pala-pala. He instructed them and ordered them to do so. A man who had the ability to frighten parolees or they would be sent back to prison. This was not done with any blueprint or anything like that. They acquired building materials from other agencies and added free labor to construct the project.”
Kingman said that “after this was over, in the beginning of July, a couple of months later, Nick Reyes decided to apply and submit an invoice and purchase order to the Department of Finance claiming that F&S Corporation, owned and operated by Chuilian Fu, …were the people that constructed this garage.”
He said that because F&S was a tailoring company, it raised some flags at Finance.
Kingman said the government would call to the witness stand the parolees who were involved in the construction, parole officers, and Finance employees.
The government’s first witness was Ryan San Nicolas, who was under parole supervision at the time.
Superior Court Judge Teresa Kim-Tenorio is presiding over the jury trial, which will resume today, Tuesday morning.
