A Eugene man pleaded guilty Monday to wire fraud involving agreements to build townhouses on several vacant lots in Newport that never materialized.
David P. Williams, 46, pleaded guilty in U.S. District Court and is scheduled to be sentenced Dec. 22. Williams faces a maximum sentence of 20 years in prison, a $250,000 fine and three years of supervised release, according to a news release from the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Portland.
According to court documents, Williams defrauded the owners of vacant lots in Newport through his companies TreeNada Co. and Treenada Construction. Williams agreed with the lot owners in November 2020 to build townhomes on their lots and between 2020 and 2022 the lot owners paid him more than $850,000.
But Williams never built the houses, the U.S. attorney’s office said, instead sending updates to owners with false progress on the project and misled the owners to get additional money. The U.S. attorney’s office said Williams used the money from Newport to pay for other projects, to repay a church he had previously defrauded, and for other debts.
A federal grand jury indicated Williams in June 2024 on 10 counts of wire fraud. As part of a plea agreement, Williams has agreed to pay full restitution to the victims, the U.S. attorney’s office said.
The U.S. Attorneys Office is a mighty trusting entity, to think that the habitual thief is going to pay his victims back. With what? Funny how we can wrist-slap a person who severely screwed up the lives of his victims, yet we have no mercy for the cashier who accidentally rang up the potatoes twice and we demand that she be fired. I’m not seeing in the story that Williams had his contractors license revoked — if he even had one. I couldn’t find it online.