PA Atty General's Office Charges Former DARE Head With Stealing $80,000

The state attorney general's office has charged the former head of Pennsylvania's D.A.R.E. program with stealing more than $80,000 from the anti-drug program and using his position to obtain free booze, food and rooms worth $32,000 from an area hotel.

Agents have been scouring Harrisburg bars and contacting Roy A. Willoughby's family members and friends since issuing an arrest warrant Monday, but have been unable to find him.

The money was stolen from grants to the Pennsylvania D.A.R.E. Officers Association that Willoughby helped procure in his position as crime-prevention manager of the Pennsylvania Commission on Crime and Delinquency, according to the 33-count warrant.

Willoughby, who has a felony record for burglary and theft, was fired from his position after his fourth drunken-driving arrest in April 2001. He also is charged with lying on state forms about prior convictions and gifts he received.

Sean Connolly, a spokesman for Attorney General Mike Fisher, said his office does not know where Willoughby is. Willoughby lived above his mother's bar on South 19th Street.

"Anyone with information of his whereabouts is asked to call our office," Connolly said.

The warrant charges Willoughby with eight counts of theft by deception, 22 counts of forgery, two ethics violations and one count of perjury.

The arrest documents detail continuing scams during Willoughby's last three years with the PCCD, which asked for the investigation after Willoughby was dismissed and it discovered he was asking the officers association for unauthorized checks.

Leaders of the officers association, which had its PCCD funding suspended, said Willoughby would apply for their grants, then ask them for checks.

The national drug-awareness program has become one of the most prominent and controversial of such programs. D.A.R.E. puts police officers in schools to teach pupils about the dangers of drug and alcohol abuse.

While it is praised by many law-enforcement and education groups as an effective deterrent, the U.S. surgeon general and the National Academy of Sciences issued reports last year saying D.A.R.E. was largely ineffective.

The officers association was forced to return $204,468 in unspent money to the PCCD after a commission audit showed widespread mismanagement with little oversight of millions of dollars in grants.

Between 1998 and last year, Willoughby cashed 10 checks totaling $45,600 from the officers association that were purportedly for billboards, the warrant says. The checks were written to Willoughby's stepbrother, Ira E. Kreitzer, who died on March 23, 2000, and had been incarcerated before that.

Willoughby also deposited $20,917 in checks from the officers association written out to Lipman Printing, the documents say. Jack Killian, treasurer of the association, told investigator R. Kirby Conrad that he had no idea what the checks were for and that he wrote them because Willoughby asked for them, the affidavit says.

Willoughby also cashed smaller checks for supplies and hotel room deposits written out in other people's names that had been returned, the warrant says.

Willoughby allegedly received several thousand dollars in his mother's name and deposited the checks in his account. According to the warrant, he told Killian he had used his mother's credit card to buy drinks and snacks at conventions.

Some of the receipts he used to justify the expenses were for $566 in purchases from Discount Tobacco in Nashville, Tenn., which sells alcohol and cigarettes. The documents say grant money cannot be used to buy alcohol or tobacco.

The warrant says his mother, Claire Weldon, told investigators she never saw or endorsed the checks written to her.

The yearlong investigation also uncovered a connection between Willoughby and the owners of Holiday Inn-West, which hosted numerous D.A.R.E. conventions and meetings.

A search of records at the hotel and bar showed Willoughby received $22,000 in complimentary food and drink and $10,000 in complimentary rooms between 1998 and 2001.

Kenneth Kochenour, president of GF Management Inc., told investigators the hotel comped Willoughby because he "pushed a tremendous amount of business" to them.

Kochenour told agents that at one point Willoughby faxed him a list of conferences and events that he claimed credit for bringing to the Holiday Inn-West.

According to the warrant, one fax was an internal PCCD memo showing that $140,000 in grant funds were going to be used for school resource officer training at the hotel.

Kochenour flew Willoughby on his private jet to GF Management properties in Charlotte, N.C., and Orlando, Fla., while he was supposedly doing a "site visit" for symposiums for the International Society of Crime Prevention Practitioners, the warrant says.

Willoughby used vacation time for the trip and the international group's officials told investigators that he was not on official business at the time.

Kochenour also took Willoughby to the 2001 Super Bowl in Tampa at a cost of $1,905, the warrant says.

Kochenour's attorney, James J. West, said his client did nothing illegal and fully cooperated with the investigation.

Willoughby's 30-year tenure at the PCCD unraveled after his fourth drunken-driving arrest in April 2001, in Lemoyne. He had previously been reprimanded for drunken-driving convictions and was dismissed from the $64,607-a-year position in May 2001.

Willoughby, 55, was hired as a clerk from a halfway house in 1971 after serving time in state prison for a series of burglaries.

By the time he was promoted to criminal planning manager in 1995, Willoughby had been reprimanded and suspended for two drunken-driving convictions in Cumberland County, in 1985 and 1989.

PCCD officials learned of the arrests after they appeared in stories in The Patriot-News. They were not aware of a 1979 drunken-driving arrest that was handled through a probationary program for first-time offenders.

He was arrested at 3:23 a.m. April 13, 2001, after his car struck a curb outside a Burger King in Lemoyne and, police said, he repeatedly tried to enter the restaurant through a back door, identifying himself as a police officer.

Willoughby pleaded guilty to drunken driving in January and prosecutors dropped other charges. He was sentenced to 2 days to 23 months in county prison.

After his dismissal, Willoughby worked as a bartender at his mother's bar, Weldon's Cafe. A person who answered the phone there yesterday said Willoughby was not there and would not say if he still worked there.

Have you ever been in a hotel where these administrators of this and like programs have a conference? I have on several occasions. The libation inspired tell-all tales makes your blood boil. This story is minor compared to the "Head Start Program". That one is layered under non-profits on top of non-profits so thick that it mirrors Enron in many cases. Sometimes I wondered if I could go to a hotel in Vegas, New Orleans, Seattle, San Diego, Orlando, etc... without some conference of government program administrators. It is really disgusting. Thank God I don't travel much any more, and my wife who does, doesn't report back to me on such issues. She is wise.

Your people. Or your betters, perhaps.

If he smoked pot he would be one of yours. Either way he broke the law, a sacred trust of the tax payers and needs to have his pound of flesh extracted. Lock this drunk stealing scumbag up and throw away the key. Fill this Dare position with somone kids can look up to.

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