Ex-game official’s safari case tossed

BY MICHAEL MARTZ

Media General News Service

Published: April 23, 2008

Prosecutors missed their target in the first of three embezzlement trials of former Virginia game department officials accused of misusing state credit cards to equip a private safari in Africa.

Yesterday, after less than five hours in a trial that had been scheduled to last two days, Judge Beverly W. Snukals of Richmond Circuit Court dismissed two embezzlement charges against Michael G. Caison, a former special operations director at the Virginia Department of Game and Inland Fisheries.

Snukals said prosecutors from the Virginia attorney general’s office and Richmond commonwealth’s attorney’s office had failed to show that Caison had made any purchases with his state credit card that had not been approved by the agency’s chief financial officer and its then-executive director, William L. Woodfin Jr.

She said prosecutors also had failed to show that Caison knew he was breaking any state law or rule in using his state American Express card to purchase $6,800 in equipment that was used on the trip to Zimbabwe in September 2004, or agency events aimed at wooing support from state officials and legislators.

The other events included a dove hunt at the Eastern Shore farm of Daniel A. Hoffler, then chairman of the game department’s board of directors; and a field trip for two prominent Republican legislators, state Sens. Kenneth W. Stolle of Virginia Beach and Thomas K. Norment Jr. of James City County.

“There is no evidence any of these items were for personal use,” Snukals said.

Defense attorney Craig Cooley asked the judge to strike the charges after prosecutors rested their case. “I think the evidence was woefully insufficient,” Cooley said after the trial.

The dismissal immediately raised questions about plans to prosecute Woodfin and Col. Terry C. Bradbery, former law-enforcement chief at the game department, in early June on embezzlement charges.

“I would certainly hope they would re-evaluate whether to go forward with the other prosecutions,” said Cooley, who does not represent the other defendants.

David Clementson, spokesman for Attorney General Bob McDonnell, said yesterday that prosecutors accept the ruling but added: “There are two other trials pending. ... The facts in each case are distinct.”

The safari trip by the three officials first was reported by the Richmond Times-Dispatch on Dec. 25, 2004.

The safari was conceived as a state fact-finding trip on wildlife conservation by Hoffler, a Virginia Beach developer and avid big-game hunter. However, the administration of then-Gov. Mark R. Warner said the state would not sponsor the trip and that the officials would have to use personal vacation time to go, which they did.

“I said there was to be no state expense,” testified then-Deputy Secretary of Natural Resources David K. Paylor, who said he delivered the decision to Woodfin four to six weeks before the trip.

Hoffler paid all of the travel expenses, but the officials used department credit cards to buy almost $13,000 in gear they used on the trip and returned to the department. After the spending came under public criticism, the game board reimbursed the state for more than the full cost of the purchases.

None of the three officials remains with the state. Woodfin resigned under pressure from the game department’s board of directors on June 1, 2005, after the state’s internal auditor blasted agency operations and spending practices. Caison and Bradbery retired in 2006 after taking extended leave.

Michael Martz is a staff writer at the Richmond Times-Dispatch.