Nevada High Court Affirms Theft Conviction of Ex-CSN Executive

Last July 2011, the Nevada Supreme Court granted the bail of William R. Gilbert, former executive of the College of Southern Nevada who has been sentencedto a minimum of 12 months of imprisonment for 11 counts of theft, pending his appeal.

The Clark County jury made a decision that Gilbert, the ex-associate vice president of facilities at CSN, is guilty of 11 counts of theft. Seven of these theft counts came from the properties that he stole from the college for the construction of his Kyle Canyon home and the other four was for getting the help of two college employees to build his home within their duty hours inside the campus.

Gilbert was also found guilty of using and bringing the properties of the college to his house. Some of the properties include a forklift, manlift, paint sprayer and 28 pallets of cinder blocks.

After he was convicted in August 2010, Gilbert was sentenced by Judge Donald Mosley on February 16, 2011 with a minimum of 12 months in prison for each of the 11 counts of theft. Aside from that, he was also penalized to pay $10,000 as a fine and more than $6,000 to compensate the damages and usage of the materials from the college. He started to serve his 12 month sentence in High Desert State Prison but was later on moved to the state minimum custody facility in Warm Springs.

Matthew Goins, George Casal and Thad Skinner, Gilbert’s co-workers in CSN facilities management department, plead guilty for theft back in August 2010. All of them received a sentence of no less than a year of informal probation.

Las Vegas Sun started the investigation about how Gilbert used his position as CSN’s construction chief to acquire an 8,200-square-foot house, a 2,500-square-foot guesthouse, stables and a lighted basketball court on his four acre property in Kyle Canyon. Until now, there are still no strong findings.

[Tweet “During the entire trial, Gilbert claimed that he is innocent.”]

“Everything I did, I did with the knowledge of the president of the college,” he insisted. This statement was given support by Ron Remington, the CSN president from 2001 to 2004, when he said in front of the court that he gave Gilbert the permission to use the building materials and equipment on his property. In fact, he also said that he is aware that some college work was done in Gilbert’s home.

Learn more about the various theft crimes.

Source(s):

http://www.lasvegassun.com/news/2012/nov/03/states-top-court-rejects-appeal-convicted-ex-csn-o/