[A]n Orleans man who last month pleaded not guilty to a murder charge in state court appeared Wednesday in federal court where he denied allegations he schemed to defraud his cheese-producing former employer of hundreds of thousands of dollars.
“Not guilty,” Randall Swartz told federal Magistrate Judge John Conroy when asked how he intended to plea to the 11-count federal indictment leveled against him.
The federal mail fraud charges allege Swartz used the postal service to carry out a scheme involving Cabot Creamery Co-operative funds to purchase the parts for equipment that he assembled and sold in a side business.
Swartz appeared at the hearing Wednesday wearing a dark green prison uniform. He has been jailed without bail on the state murder charge in the fatal shooting of his wife, Thea Swartz, 54, in their Orleans home in May.
On Wednesday, Conroy ordered that Randall Swartz also be detained on the federal charges. However, if his bail status changes on the state murder charge, Conroy said that ruling detaining him on the federal offenses could be reviewed.
Richard Goldsborough, a South Burlington attorney representing Swartz, did not object to that arrangement. Following the hearing, Goldsborough declined comment on the cases against his client.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Gregory Waples, who is prosecuting Swartz on the federal charges, argued in court and in a filing that Swartz should be detained on the federal offenses. In his filing, Waples cited the murder case against Swartz.
According to court records on that murder charge, Swartz fatally shot his wife while she was on the phone with a 911 dispatcher.
Police reports and court records say Swartz then turned the gun on himself. Police arriving at the Swartz home found Thea Swartz dead, and Randall Swartz alive, but unresponsive.
He was treated for gunshot wound to his torso at Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center in Lebanon, New Hampshire, and later released.
Shortly after his release from the hospital he was arraigned on the murder charge in Orleans County Superior Court where he entered a not guilty plea.
“These circumstances demonstrate that if released on conditions, the defendant would pose a serious risk to himself, to potential witnesses, and to employees of his former employer, the victim in this case,” Waples wrote in his motion seeking to detain Swartz on the federal charges.
The prosecutor added, “The prospect of years if not decades of imprisonment also provides this 58-year-old man with a strong incentive to flee.”
The federal fraud indictment against Swartz was handed down two days after his arraignment on the state murder charges.
Swartz said little during the hearing Wednesday in federal court in Burlington, answering questions about whether he understood the allegations in such a soft voice that at times prompted the judge had to tell him to speak up.
‘Is your mind clear today?” Conroy asked.
“Yes,” Swartz replied.
“Do you understand why you are here,” the judge inquired.
“Yes,” Swartz responded.
Asked where he last worked, Swartz told the judge, “In New York, in a dairy-bottling operation.”
The probe, which spanned well over a year, leading the federal charges against him included an FBI raid on his home in March 2017.
That raid came three months after he was fired in January of that year from his longtime job as maintenance manager at the Cabot Creamery Co-operative, a major Vermont cheese producer now partly owned by Agri-Mark.
In that job, according to the indictment, Swartz was responsible for maintaining, repairing and replacing all machinery and equipment at the Cabot plant.
At the same time, Swartz also owned his own business, Kingdom Reverse Osmosis, or Kingdom RO, court records stated. That company sold reverse osmosis systems, which are used in the processing of maple sap into syrup.
The Cabot plant also employed reverse osmosis technology, the indictment stated.
Beginning “no later than 2010” and continuing up to the time of his termination, the indictment stated, Swartz had been “causing the company to order hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of reverse osmosis equipment that was too small for Agri-Mark to use in its cheese-making processes.
Instead, according to the indictment, Swartz stole the equipment and sold them as part of his side business.
In one case, according to prosecutors, he even sold a system back to the cooperative, and in other instances had company employees on company time assemble and install equipment for his own business.
If convicted of the federal offense, Swartz could face as many as two decades in prison and a fine of as much as $250,000. If convicted of the state murder charge, Swartz could spend the rest of his life behind bars.