NEWPORT — A federal grand jury in Rutland indicted Randall Swartz, 58, of Orleans, on 11 counts of mail fraud.
According to this week’s indictment, until January 2017 when he was fired, Swartz was employed as the maintenance manager at Agri-Mark’s cheese-making plant in Cabot.
As the maintenance manager, he was responsible for maintaining, repairing and replacing all machinery and equipment at the Cabot site.
The maintenance budget amounted to several hundred thousand dollars each month.
Swartz also owned a side-business, Kingdom RO, which sold reverse osmosis systems that were used by producers of maple syrup to concentrate and purify maple sap.
Agri-Mark also employed reverse osmosis technology at its Cabot facility.
The indictment alleges that beginning no later than 2010 and continuing up to the time of his termination, Swartz defrauded Agri-Mark by 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, he allegedly stole the equipment and installed it in smaller RO systems he sold to clients of Kingdom RO.
It is charged that Swartz further defrauded Agri-Mark by using company employees, on company time, to assemble and install these RO systems.
The indictment alleges he used the U.S. Postal Service and private commercial carriers to deliver this fraudulently-obtained RO equipment either to the Cabot plant or to his house.
Swartz will be arraigned on these charges in the near future in U.S. District Court in Burlington. No court date has been set.
If convicted, he faces up to 20 years of imprisonment and a fine of up to $250,000.
