Stephen Williams was sentenced by U.S. District Court Judge Richard G. Andrews to 42 months’ for bribery in connection with programs receiving federal funds.
Williams is the co-defendant with Crystal Martin, the Delaware State University administrator who pleaded guilty to the same bribery scheme in April 2019. She will be sentenced in February.
According to court documents and statements made in open court, between 2013 and 2017, Williams was the leader of a bribery scheme at DSU.
Williams recruited students to pay him a fee to change their student registration status from out-of-state residency to in-state residency.
After students paid him their fee, Williams helped create forged residency documents, such as leases, and then delivered the forged documents to his co-defendant Martin to place in the students’ files.
Williams paid Martin a percentage of the fee he collected from each student whose residency was changed, amounting to approximately $70,000 over the course of four years.
Williams also paid DSU students to recruit others interested in having their registration status changed. While the total amount that Williams profited from his scheme remains unknown, the estimated cost of reduced tuition payments of more than 250 students to DSU during this four-year-period exceeded $3 million, court documents indicated.
