TALLAHASSEE, FL - Attorney General Bill McCollum today announced that the owner of a Tampa construction company has been sentenced to five years in prison and five years probation for his involvement in an organized scheme to defraud. Michael Lee Cone, president and owner of Cone Constructors, Inc., was previously convicted in a jury trial of defrauding the Florida Department of Transportation and various subcontractors. The case was prosecuted by the Attorney General’s Office of Statewide Prosecution.

From July 1999 through May 2000, the Tampa-based road building company was the general contractor on sections of the Suncoast Parkway in Hillsborough and Pasco Counties. The Department of Transportation paid the company a monthly progress payment and from that sum, the company was supposed to pay its subcontractors their shares for work done during that month. The company was also required to certify under oath that it had paid all of its subcontractors their shares of previous monthly payments before it could get any of the following monthly payments.

Investigators with the Department of Transportation’s Office of Inspector General determined that Cone and his company engaged in a scheme to defraud some of its subcontractors by not paying them their shares. Cone, 51, also filed false certificates with the Department of Transportation certifying that all of the company’s subcontractors had been paid, thus depriving the subcontractors of their money and causing the Department of Transportation to prematurely release more than $9 million to the company.

The company’s controller, Michael K. Behrens, previously pleaded guilty to charges of organized scheme to defraud and was sentenced to nine months in jail to be followed by three years of probation. The company was also convicted of fraud charges and must pay a $10,000 fine as well as more than $219,000 in reimbursements to the state for costs of investigation and prosecution. The sentence was handed down late yesterday by Senior Judge Richard Watson, formerly of the 7th Judicial Circuit.