The last man facing charges in what federal prosecutors described as a widespread kickback scheme pleaded guilty Tuesday.
Chadwick Lusk, who was the purchasing agent at Arch Coal's Mountain Laurel Mine in Sharples, pleaded guilty to honest services mail fraud.
His plea comes more than two years after 10 men were accused of taking part in a scheme that forced companies to pay kickbacks in order to work at the Logan County mine.
The plea Tuesday was the second time Lusk has tried to take a deal offered by prosecutors. U.S. District Judge Thomas Johnston said he won't decide until later whether there is a sufficient factual basis to support Lusk's plea.
Lusk is set to be sentenced Feb. 8.
Last year, Johnston rejected plea deals for three of the 10 men charged in the scheme, including Lusk.
Lusk, though, was the only man that prosecutors refiled a charge against in the matter.
After Johnston threw out the deals James Evans and David Herndon tried to make, prosecutors withdrew charges against the men. Their charges were dismissed without prejudice, meaning they can be refiled.
In the cases of Lusk and Evans, the judge found that the evidence wasn't sufficient to support the men's guilty pleas on charges of honest services mail fraud.
In Lusk's case, after the judge's skepticism, prosecutors asked him to dismiss the charge and then refiled it.
Lusk was charged again last year with honest services mail fraud, but prosecutors changed the company he's accused of depriving of his honest services from Arch Coal to the Mingo Logan Coal Co.
Prosecutors say Lusk denied Mingo Logan its right to his honest services by taking kickbacks in exchange for buying "crib blocks" for mine-roof support from CM Supply.
Gary L. Roeher, who was sentenced to three years probation after pleading guilty to filing a false tax return, owns CM Supply.
For someone to be convicted of honest services mail fraud, prosecutors must show that the defendant (an employee) had a fiduciary duty to the private-sector entity the defendant defrauded.
Mountain Laurel is owned by Mingo Logan Coal, which is a wholly owned subsidiary of Arch Coal.
Herndon, the owner of MAC Mine Services Inc., admitted paying kickbacks to provide contract labor at the Mountain Laurel Mine, but he wouldn't admit an element of the crime the judge said was required to convict him.
In his order refusing that deal, Johnston said there wasn't a factual basis for Herndon's guilty plea to an unlawful monetary transaction.
Before prosecutors dropped the charge, Johnston said the dispute should be resolved during a trial.
To accept his guilty plea, Herndon had to admit that he knew the money Arch paid him for the work performed by his company was illegal, according to the judge's order.
Herndon did admit that the kickbacks he paid to David E. Runyon were unlawful. However, he would not admit that the funds received from Arch Coal pertaining to his contract at Mountain Laurel, arising out of his payments to Runyon, were obtained from a criminal offense.
Runyon, the former general manager at Mountain Laurel, pleaded guilty last year to extortion and tax evasion. He was the leader of the scheme, the judge said, and was sentenced to 41 months in prison.
Prosecutors had said Evans, who owns Baisden Recycling, paid Arch's commission on scrap metal he recycled from Mountain Laurel to Runyon, rather than to Arch, as a kickback to keep the recycling contract.
The judge found that Evans and his alleged conspirator, Runyon, did not have the required fiduciary duty to Arch Coal to sustain the conspiracy charge against Evans.
Reach Kate White at kate.white@wvgazettemail.com, 304-348-1723 or follow @KateLWhite on Twitter.