DeSoto ISD Employee Pleads Guilty to Wire Fraud Conspiracy

A DeSoto Independent School District employee pleaded guilty today to embezzling more than $250,000 from the district, announced U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of Texas Chad E. Meacham.

Terry Lynn Sanders, the 57-year-old former DeSoto ISD Director of Energy Management, pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit wire fraud.

In plea papers, Mr. Sanders admitted he used a school district credit card to make 30 payments worth $255,100 to an outside company. The owner of the company, identified in court documents as “individual A,” then kicked back a portion of each payment, totaling approximately $100,000, to Mr. Sanders.

Mr. Sanders admitted that neither individual A nor his company performed any work for the school district, nor was the company an approved vendor with a contract with the district.

He also admitted that in order to test oversight of the card, he used the card to make seven payments worth $17,466 to pay a fictitious vendor tied to his own bank account.

Mr. Sanders now faces up to five years in federal prison.

The Federal Bureau of Investigation’s Dallas Field Office conducted the investigation. Assistant U.S. Attorney Marcus Busch is prosecuting the case.