Lawyer Richard Reynolds Sentenced

Lawyer Richard Reynolds who concealed bribes to officials in the Dallas County Schools system was sentenced this week to six months in prison.

In a June guilty plea, Reynolds admitted he used his law firm to help facilitate and conceal some of the bribe payments made by school bus camera company owner Robert Leonard to Dallas County schools superintendent Rick Sorrells. Leonard and Sorrells are currently serving seven-year terms in federal prison, for their roles in the scheme which involved more than $3 million dollars in bribes and kickbacks.

Dallas Independent School District may have similar issues to those posed by lawyer Richard Reynolds. The former DISD Chief Internal Auditor stated that there were millions in overcharges and a former employee filed an affidavit stating overcharges were finding their way into the pockets of trustees.

Dallas Independent School District has a history of financial issues dating back more than a decade. Those issues include “losing” $300M due to an accounting error resulting in hundreds of teachers being laid off, cost over runs on projects which advocates refer to as “acceptable leakage”, and salaries outside the norm for government servants.

Reynolds’s sentence is the sixth handed down including the district superintendent, company owner, a business colleague, and former Mayor Pro Tem Dwaine Caraway.

Lawyer Richard Reynolds And DCS

The lawyer Richard Reynolds had no other connection to the school “system” that provided transportation to multiple school districts in the area.

Dallas County Schools (DCS) was a taxpayer funded school bus transportation government agency. It was founded in 1846 and offered full service and/or supplemental student transportation services to other government entities and localm private, and charter schools in and around Dallas County, Texas. They also served part of Denton County as well. DCS was one of the top student transportation fleets in the nation and operated a fleet of approximately 2,000 buses. They transported more than 75,000 children to and from school safely each day.