Arkansas doctor who co-signed loan to lawmaker regrets state grant

Dr. Richard Roblee, a Fayetteville orthodontist, co-signed a $30,000 unsecured loan to state Rep. Jon Woods in March 2012. One year later, Woods introduced a bill resulting in a $900,000 state grant to a medical-records business whose board chairman was Roblee.

"We would have been much better off if we had never gotten that grant," Roblee said Thursday. The grant started a chain of events leading to the 20-year-old U.S. HealthRecord closing its operations in 2017, according to Roblee and business records.

The bill authorizing the grant became law in March 2013. Woods, who was a state senator by then, picked up the $900,000 grant check to Roblee's firm on Sept. 27, 2013. State grant records say he intended to hand-deliver the check. Six months later, the secretary-treasurer of Roblee's company co-signed the first of two more unsecured loans to Woods totaling another $50,150, according to court records.

A federal court jury convicted Woods on May 3 of 15 fraud-related counts involving kickbacks from state General Improvement Fund grants that Woods directed to two nonprofit companies, AmeriWorks of Bentonville and Ecclesia College of Springdale, from 2013-15. Woods is serving an 18-year, four-month prison sentence. The investigation is ongoing and has resulted in the convictions of four former state lawmakers and the indictment of a fifth, so far.

Read more: https://www.arkansasonline.com/news/2018/dec/23/co-signer-of-loan-regrets-state-grant-2/?latest