Pasco downtown development director’s web of lies spun out of control (with video)

Michael A. Goins never played baseball in college. He majored in English, not math. And he didn’t get an MBA.

So started Goins’ web of lies, leading to the biggest deception — the embezzlement of at least $90,000 from the Downtown Pasco Development Authority.

“(I) lied about who I am. Used people’s emotions to get desired result(s),” Goins wrote during a stay at Lourdes Counseling Center’s psychiatric facility. “(I) deceived everyone into thinking I am a good person.”

For two years, the executive director used the public agency’s money to cover his groceries, utilities at his Richland home, back child support and even trips to New Jersey to visit his two kids.

It all came to a head in late 2015 when Goins no longer could delay queries from the IRS about unpaid taxes, and agency board members discovered outstanding bills on numerous accounts.

With his web unraveling, Goins decided he needed some peace in his life and he swallowed 25 sleeping pills with a bottle of wine.

He ended up at Lourdes, and it was during that stay that Goins reflected on his path of lies and dishonesty.

“In the end, I was trying to take care of everything. I had so much guilt and so much pain and so much stuff inside, that it was very unbearable for me. And that’s selfish, but that’s how I felt,” Goins said in an interview with Pasco police.

“I felt tormented and tortured because here — I know what the right thing is, and I like to think on most aspects that I’m a good person — but I was in a situation and made some really poor decisions.”

Goins, 36, has admitted first-degree theft with aggravating factors and faces a recommended term of one year in state prison. However, his plea deal hinges on the amount of embezzled money not exceeding $150,000.

Sentencing is set for Feb. 23, but likely will be delayed because the state Auditor’s Office has not finished its report.

Goins repeatedly told investigators he did not intend for the Pasco agency to suffer a loss.

The association, which is partially funded by taxpayer dollars, oversees the Pasco Farmers Market and Pasco Specialty Kitchen and coordinates events like Cinco de Mayo and the Fiery Foods Festival.

He planned to replace the stolen money with his own cash, he said, through fundraisers involving downtown businesses and possibly a new grant.

Yet while he was neglecting or falling behind on a majority of the agency’s bills, he made sure to keep current on the insurance — just in case he ever was caught.

Eventually he lost control.

Goins told Pasco Detective Tony Aceves after his Dec. 1 arrest that “I don’t think I was trying to get away with it. Honestly, I think it was the fact that I was under an extreme amount of pressure to try to make ends meet and make some obligations to New Jersey.

“Then the more that I, you know, kind of sunk into my funk and whatever that I was in, it just became at some point self-destructive,” he added.

A new life in the Tri-Cities

While the criminal case in Franklin County Superior Court deals with the theft from the Downtown Pasco Development Authority, Goins acknowledged to police he has been scamming people for years.

He used his company charge card from a New Jersey senior living facility to travel across the country and visit his Tri-City girlfriend. He denied he already was married and later claimed he was in the middle of a divorce.

He didn’t tell his then-wife about their financial problems, even after their New Jersey home was foreclosed on.

And he abandoned his wife and two young kids to start a new life in Washington, crafting tales to cover up his lies each time his girlfriend-turned-second-wife made another questionable discovery.

Goins implied that he took the money from the Pasco association in an attempt to make amends, hoping that his family and others would forgive him for his past misdeeds and stop hating him.

Now that this embezzlement is out in the open, Goins again is seeking forgiveness.

“This is no one’s fault but my own,” Goins wrote in a letter to his current wife, Heather. “Who knows, maybe I’ve had issues for a long time. I can honestly say I didn’t want to hurt anyone.”

The letter is part of the investigative file obtained by the Tri-City Herald through a public disclosure request to the Franklin County Prosecutor’s Office.

Goins also talked to the Herald, both in a jailhouse interview and in a handwritten letter.

‘Nobody knew where I was’

About eight years ago, Meghan and Michael Goins moved from Washington, D.C., so he could take a dream job with a restaurant group opening a new location in Atlantic City.

Problems with the business led to a company split and ultimately a pay cut for Goins, he told investigators.

In the meantime, Meghan was pregnant with their first child. Goins fast-tracked a home purchase so their son could be raised in their own house, instead of a rental. Six months later they started falling behind on payments. He tried to get a loan modification but was denied.

The foreclosure in 2012 set him into a downward spiral because he knew his wife would be upset with him and might possibly take their kids and leave, he said.

That’s when Goins met Heather online, which led him to create “this whole other persona that made me happy.”

While working at the senior living facility, he started using his company card to visit Heather, thinking he could slip the airfare and rental cars through with other work-related travel expenses.

But someone noticed when Goins submitted a ticket to Seattle, even though there hadn’t been a conference in the city on those dates.

Goins — recognizing that he had got himself into a “financial kind of mess” both at home and work — said he was “in a pretty dark place” and he had to decide what to do.

“When I left New Jersey, I put my kids to bed one day, kissed them goodnight, and then the next day I was gone and then nobody knew where I was for a while,” he told Aceves of his February 2013 disappearance.

His father filed a missing person’s report, but Goins claims he notified police of his whereabouts a week later.

‘I got into quicksand’

Goins believed everything was going to be all right with his move to the Tri-Cities, but “felt a tremendous amount of guilt because I was walking out on my family,” he said.

Meghan put a temporary restraining order on him, he said. Then, while seeking supervised visits with his son and daughter, he was ordered to pay about $25,000 in arrears for child support based on his former, higher salary. He claims he was unsuccessful in trying to get it modified.

Goins’ former employer opted not to pursue criminal charges. The case was handled civilly with an agreement “that Goins would be banished from working for any company related to senior care,” according to a document in the Pasco file.

He was hired by the Pasco association in July 2013. About six months later he started dipping into agency funds for personal use, including to pay $890 every two weeks for child support instead of having it garnished from his paycheck. He claims he was not doing it to be greedy and didn’t use the money to “purchase diamonds and Rolexes and try to sell them.”

“I used it for personal, that’s where it all got kind of screwed up, and then I just never was able to catch myself,” Goins said.

“The intent was always to say, ‘Well on this paycheck I’ll put this back here or pay this to this,’ and it didn’t (happen). I got into quicksand and it got bigger and bigger, and I … wasn’t able to catch it up.”

Goins had a “great fundraising plan” for the Downtown Pasco Development Authority to help him recoup about $40,000 of the stolen money and make a payment to the IRS, but the embezzlement was discovered before he could put it into place, he said.

So in mid-November, Goins thought the only way to make it right with everyone was to kill himself, he said.

“I felt like I was kind of living over my life, like (I was) watching it from 30,000 feet above,” he told police. “I’m not happy to be sitting here, but I at least can be 100 percent honest for the first time, and at least admit that I have a mental illness and that I’m depressed.”

‘I’m not an awful person’

Two months into his treatment while still locked up, Goins wrote the Herald to apologize to the community for the trouble he has caused. He said he wanted to make the public statement to supplement his anticipated comments at sentencing.

“While my passion and energy for my position were real, the decisions I made I regret and am filled with remorse each day,” Goins wrote. “For those I served and to the peers I collaborated with, I am truly sorry.”

More importantly, he said, are the apologies he has for his family who’ve had to endure the stress and humiliation of the situation, and for his children because he could have been a better example.

Goins also credited his wife with staying strong while he let her down and teaching him “unconditional love that we should all aspire to.”

Goins agreed to meet with a reporter last week in the Franklin County jail. The interview was cut short when his lawyer, Daniel Stovern, showed up and asked his client to stop talking.

Most of what Goins told the Herald was similar to his confession to police in December. However, he shied away from talking about specifics of his criminal case, his past back east or his suicide attempt.

Goins said there was never an addiction fueling the embezzlement scheme.

“I’m not an awful person,” he said. “I made some very poor mistakes. I’m paying for them.”

The 82 days he has been in jail have not been easy on anyone, he said, but he’s had the support of his family and some community members.

“It’s been a challenge. I am not a lifelong criminal,” he said.

Goins prays a lot in preparing himself for prison, and he thinks about life after and wanting to help others who have been through troubling times, he said.

“I don’t want people to feel sorry for me,” he said. “I will never do anything dishonest again.”

Staff writer Tyler Richardson contributed to this report.

This story was originally published February 20, 2016 at 9:42 PM with the headline "Pasco downtown development director’s web of lies spun out of control (with video)."