Lauritz and Frank Mills were fully exonerated by a federal court Wednesday after a jury acquitted them of all charges.
Lauritz Mills, director of the V.I. Bureau of Economic Research, was charged in May 2011 with embezzling federal funds and filing false tax returns. Her husband, Frank Mills, was charged with filing false tax returns. Frank Mills is director of the Eastern Caribbean Center at the University of the Virgin Islands.
The charges stemmed from a local inspector general’s audit from the case of former government aide Alric Simmonds, who was sentenced in 2008 to seven years in prison after being convicted of embezzling government funds. The audit claimed Mills knew about Simmonds’ transactions and violated procurement practices.
Lauritz Mills disputed the audit’s claims at the time in a September 2009 phone interview with the Source where she described the report as "unfair and incorrect." In many instances, the auditors never sat down with BER employees to discuss their findings, and if they had, they would have been provided with documentation that disputes their claims, she said at the time.
In a court order filed Thursday, U.S. Magistrate Judge Ruth Miller announced the couple were acquitted and ordered that they be exonerated of their court bonds and given their passports back.
