Superior Court Presiding Judge Robert Naraja is the designated judge who will preside over Franz Reksid’s arraignment scheduled at 4 p.m. at the U.S. District Court for the NMI.
Reksid used to be the special assistant to the secretary of DPL and in that capacity was responsible for overseeing certain U.S. Environmental Protection Agency grants, including Brownfields, which was supposed to fund the removal and disposal of unexploded World War II ordnance in Marpi.
According to the superseding indictment, Reksid received a bribe of $3,000 from the owner and president of a business engaged in a series of transactions with DPL which were funded by EPA Brownfields grants on or about Feb. 12, 2009.
During this period, the indictment added, Reksid also borrowed money from friends, associates and family members that accumulated to $300,000 and wired them to unidentified persons he met on the internet, based in Ivory Coast and Lagos, Nigeria.
Reksid managed to obtain the loans through false pretenses that he had substantial sums in a bank account in New York and that he needed to pay some attorney fees to “unlock” it, the indictment stated.
To others, the indictment added, he said he needed the money to pay for his wife’s medical expenses.
He told his creditors that he would pay them back “in a few days,” the indictment stated.
But in reality, it added, Reksid did not have a bank account in New York.
“Defendant Frank B. Reksid’s statements, representations and promises to the victims were not true. He did not have substantial amounts of money in a New York bank account, or in any other account…. Instead, he himself wires, or on several occasions had one of his victims, Gui Qin Che, wire on his behalf, most if not all of the money to locations in Africa in the apparent hope of obtaining a windfall from persons he met via the internet,” stated U.S. Assistant Attorney Eric O’Malley who is prosecuting the case.
“He did not reveal these facts to the victim from whom he requested and/or obtained money…. Reksid has not obtained a windfall and has only paid back a small fraction of the money. Over the course of the scheme, he asked for and received money from at least 14 victims, some on multiple occasions,” O’Malley added.
The prosecution said his victims lent Reksid in the hundreds and thousands of dollars, all of which are now gone.
