Federal prosecutors this week asked a judge to set a guilty plea hearing for a man accused of creating a fake prep school in South Charleston in 2011.
Daniel Hicks was charged earlier this year with wire and mail fraud, but on Thursday prosecutors also charged Hicks with making a false statement to a federal agent. The felony charge this week was filed in the form of an information, which can't be filed without a defendant's consent and usually signals a defendant has agreed to cooperate with prosecutors.
In a motion asking that the charges contained in an August indictment against Hicks be continued, prosecutors wrote that if Hicks pleads guilty to the charge filed Thursday and a judge accepts the plea and sentences him, the other charges involving the prep academy will be dismissed.
In another matter in federal court, Hicks is set to be sentenced Jan. 30 for distributing heroin. He pleaded guilty to that charge in June. Hicks is being held in the South Central Regional Jail.
South Charleston officials in September 2011 discovered more than 20 athletes in a two-bedroom unfurnished apartment. Federal prosecutors allege Hicks lured the students to the area from around the world to attend a school that didn't exist as a scheme to defraud and obtain money by false pretenses.
He allegedly told potential students that attending his school would be a way for high school and post-high school students to play basketball and football and compete for college football and basketball scholarships.
"In truth, however, there was no established school," wrote Assistant U.S. Attorney Meredith George Thomas in the charge filed in August.
The charge filed Thursday states that a federal agent was assigned in March 2013 to assist South Charleston police with their investigation and determine if any federal criminal violations had occurred during Hicks' attempt to start a prep school.
On about April 3, 2013, the information states, the FBI agent and a South Charleston detective served a federal grand jury target letter on Hicks, which advised him he was the target of an investigation regarding his West Virginia Prep Academy. It was then that prosecutors allege Hicks stated that he "did not get a dime" from anyone related to the prep academy.
With that statement Hicks, prosecutors allege, "knowingly and willfully made a materially false, fictitious, and fraudulent statement and representation in a matter within the jurisdiction of the executive branch of the Government of the United States," the charging document states. "This statement and representation was false, fictitious and fraudulent, as defendant Daniel Andrew Hicks then and there well knew, because [Hicks] had in fact received funds from at least one parent who sought to enroll a son" in the school.
South Charleston police in 2011 charged Hicks with fraudulent schemes, but he was never indicted in Kanawha County.
Hicks also has a 2010 drug conviction from Putnam County.
West Virginia law allows anyone to organize a prep school, with minimal oversight or regulation by state authorities.
Part of the alleged scheme, the indictment states, included Hicks applying to the West Virginia Department of Education to register as a private, parochial school. He was set to go to trial next month over the charges he faced in the indictment.
Hicks told the Gazette-Mail in 2011 that he had made a mistake by allowing some of the young men and their parents to delay payments for tuition and fees, which included payment for food and lodging.
His case has been assigned to U.S. District Judge Thomas Johnston.
Reach Kate White at kate.white@wvgazettemail.com, 304-348-1723 or follow @KateLWhite on Twitter.