Police officers, owners of Lowcountry Fiberglass Pool convicted of fraud in Charleston | News

The pool contractor is accused of massive fraud scheme pleaded guilty in several Lowcountry counties to stealing tens of thousands of dollars from several Charleston families.

District Judge Jennifer McCoy sentenced Thomas Wayne Riley, 56, to one year in prison and five years of probation on the condition that he make restitution to the Charleston County families he defrauded.

He was charged with seven counts of breach of trust to defraud. He will be required to pay more than $100,000 in restitution to his Charleston County victims alone.

If Riley violates his probation, he could spend another nine years in prison.

Riley, owner of Lowcountry Fiberglass Pools, is still at risk of 10 criminal charges related to fraud in Calhoun County and one in Dorchester County. In total, he is accused of stealing nearly $350,000 over several years, starting in 2020.

Some victims filed cases in civil court. The cases of the others never went to prosecutors because sheriffs in Berkeley and Beaufort counties declined to charge Riley, the victims told The Post and Courier after the Oct. 24 sentencing. The victims found each other, partly because of that social networks.

Prosecutors alleged Riley collected payments to install pools he never intended to complete in Charleston from about April 2021 to August 2022.

Instead, he spent the money on fishing and hunting, putting his daughter through college, a new car, home renovations and vacations, Matt Wayne said. island of palm trees the resident Riley stole from.

Riley even started building his own pool at his St. Matthews residence with money from clients, he said.

“My money is still being spent while he’s in jail,” Wayne said after the sentencing.

Google Earth images from 2021 to the present show a 30-foot-plus pool in his backyard in various stages of completion. The investigation was first reported by CBS affiliate WCSC-TV News about widespread fraud.

The victims told McCoy they did not believe Riley would receive restitution and asked for a significant prison sentence.

Riley’s attorney, Brian Alfaro, told the judge that he has the option of recovering some of the restitution. Riley paid two victims in Calhoun County a total of $50,000 in civil settlements, Alfaro said.

Riley told McCoy that he has been a pool contractor for about 30 years. According to him, the dispute with his customers began due to problems with the supply chain of COVID-19.

“We just got into it all,” he said.

Wayne said he had undermined the victims’ trust in the wider community and did not believe his claims that the COVID-19 pandemic was to blame. According to him, the justice system worked at a certain level.

Victims questioned why the State Division of Law Enforcement or the Attorney General’s Office did not step in to consolidate the cases, given the overlap of jurisdictions in the downstate. They also questioned why Riley, the seller named in the arrest warrant, had not been charged.

“It’s really hard to sit here and not see him get a substantial sentence,” he said.

Alfaro asked McCoy to delay sentencing. He said he planned to plead guilty to the other cases and wanted all of them to be sentenced at the same time and for a certain amount of time to collect money for restitution. McCoy refused.

“I don’t want this to drag on any longer,” she said.