Around this time five years ago, agents from the FBI and IRS unexpectedly descended on the administrative offices of the Houston Independent School District and the Cypress-area home of its then-chief operating officer.
From Brian Busby’s home, the agents seized $90,150 in cash, while an additional $95,874 in cash was taken from the home and vehicle of Anthony Hutchison, a former NFL running back whose company did landscaping and maintenance work for the school district.
Investigators claim the money was part of an illegal kickback scheme in which Hutchison paid Busby and other HISD employees for favorable treatment. However, Busby’s attorney, Dick DeGuerin, has argued that the money came from gambling winnings and rental income, and cash his client received from his mother to help with her care.
Come Monday, Busby will have the opportunity to clear his name when his federal trial begins. Hutchison, represented by Rusty Hardin and Letitia D. Quinones-Hollins, will also stand trial.
Jury trials have become increasingly rare in federal courts. According to the Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts, during the 12-month period ending December 12, 2024, fewer than two percent of individuals facing criminal charges were judged by a body of their peers. Statistics show that the vast majority of defendants ultimately pleaded guilty.
Mowing jobs went unfulfilled, prosecutors say
In the months following the February 2020 raids, details were scarce as officials remained tight-lipped. Busby was placed on paid administrative leave, and then-HISD Interim Superintendent Grenita Lathan chose not to renew his contract when it expired later that year.
In September, federal authorities filed a civil forfeiture suit related to the seized funds, revealing that Busby was under investigation for allegedly conspiring to steer contracts to Hutchison, who only partially fulfilled them, cheating the district out of millions.
More than a year later, in December 2021, a 26-count indictment against both individuals was unsealed, followed by a superseding indictment in April 2022 that added tax evasion charges.
Prosecutors allege that Hutchison, through his company Southwest Wholesale LLC, overbilled HISD by about $6 million over seven years for mowing services that were never performed. Instead of fulfilling the agreed-upon 35 “cuts” per property each year, Hutchison allegedly completed only 20, yet collected payment for hundreds of cuts that were never made. He’s also accused of overbilling for mulch he supplied to the district.
For the properties Southwest Wholesale failed to maintain, Busby, as the district’s chief operating officer, allegedly pressed HISD managers to authorize and approve overtime pay for district crews to handle the work themselves.
Prosecutors also claim that Hutchison secured contracts for other landscaping, maintenance, construction, and repair jobs at HISD schools and properties by paying cash bribes to Busby and other district personnel, including former board president Rhonda Skillern-Jones.
In October 2021, Skillern-Jones pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy in connection with the scheme. While serving as a trustee on the school board in 2017, she sought funding for landscaping projects at Holland Middle School and Pleasantville Elementary, according to a 14-page plea agreement.
According to the agreement, Busby suggested that Hutchison handle the work, telling her, “They can get a little something from it.” After agreeing with Busby that Hutchison would complete the work for the two schools, Skillern-Jones then requested a budget allocation of $231,645 for landscaping projects at schools in her district during a board meeting.
At the August 10, 2017 meeting, Skillern-Jones voted in favor of the proposal, which the board subsequently approved. In the agreement, prosecutors said FBI agents found a ledger in Hutchison’s home showing he had “made two bribe payments” to Skillern-Jones, each totaling $10,000.
According to the agreement, Skillern-Jones met with Busby in a Walmart parking lot, where she received cash from Hutchison. “Skillern-Jones recalls receiving approximately $12,000 from Busby,” prosecutors wrote.
Four other former district employees—Derrick Sanders, Alfred Hoskins, Gerron Hall, and Luis Tovar—have also pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy. In their plea agreements, they admitted to accepting bribes from Hutchison in exchange for helping him secure HISD contracts or for not obstructing the process by which he did so.
Court records indicate the five individuals have not yet been sentenced, likely because they have not yet fully met the terms of their plea agreements, which include testifying against Hutchinson and Busby. While they face a maximum sentence of five years in prison and fines up to $250,000, their cooperation is expected to result in a more lenient sentence.
According to the superseding indictment, Hutchison funneled nearly $530,000 to Busby through both direct payments and payments to various contractors for remodeling work at Busby’s home. Additionally, Hutchison made cash payments totaling $201,500 to the five former HISD employees, the indictment says.
State records indicate that Southwest Wholesale LLC is still active. However, Just Partners Construction LLC, a separate company owned by Hutchison that prosecutors claim also secured contracts and purchase orders from HISD, was dissolved in August 2021. Hutchison’s home remodeling business, AL&H Custom Homes LLC, remains active.
The money seized from Hutchison’s home and vehicle was later returned after U.S. District Judge Andrew Hanen ruled in March 2022 that the government had “failed to allege a sufficient connection” between the cash and unlawful activity.
“The court appreciates that having nearly $100,000 in cash at one’s home would certainly stimulate the curiosity of even the most naive person,” Hanen wrote in an eight-page order. “Nevertheless, the allegations against the money seized from Hutchison at most give rise only to a mere suspicion that the cash seized was intended to be used as part of the alleged scheme to defraud HISD.”
Bribes or gifts?
A key piece of evidence in the weeks-long trial will be a handwritten ledger that prosecutors claim belongs to Hutchison and outlines the individuals he bribed, along with the projects that corresponded to the payments.
According to prosecutors, the ledger contains recipients’ initials or first names and sometimes lists the locations where the bribes were paid, such as local restaurants, schools, or during trips to Las Vegas.
On Wednesday, DeGuerin and Hardin objected to prosecutors’ characterization of the ledger, urging U.S. District Judge Andrew Hanen to prevent them from referring to it as a “bribe ledger” in front of the jury.
The high-profile attorneys, who previously served as lead prosecutors during Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton’s impeachment trial that ended with Paxton’s acquittal, also suggested that the payments were not bribes but monetary gifts given as a token of appreciation for hard work.
“Many (payments) given to Busby and others were a way of saying thanks for the good work they did – they weren’t bribes,” Hardin said.
Hardin, whose past clients include NFL quarterback Deshaun Watson, baseball legend Wade Boggs, and Arthur Andersen—the accounting firm at the center of the Enron scandal—said the evidence would show Hutchison inadvertently overbilled HISD and, upon realizing his error, brought it to the district’s attention.
During a pretrial conference on Wednesday, DeGuerin and Hardin, along with Assistant U.S. Attorneys Robert Searls Johnson and Heather Rae Winter, spent nearly four hours haggling over what evidence could be used at trial.
The defense lawyers strongly objected to the exclusion of what they described as complete bid packages submitted when Hutchison’s companies sought work from the district.
Without the complete packages, Hardin, his co-counsel Quinones-Hollins, and DeGuerin’s co-counsel, Mark Wells White III, argued that they would be unable to demonstrate that Busby was not involved in awarding contracts to Hutchison’s companies in some instances. (Prosecutors claim that Hutchison first secured a contract with HISD for landscaping and maintenance work in 2011.)
In response, Johnson and Winter said that despite ongoing communication with HISD, district personnel had not provided the requested documents.
“We’ve been at this for a while,” Johnson said of his correspondence with HISD. The opposing parties ultimately agreed to subpoena HISD while continuing with the trial.
FBI agents lied to, prosecutors say
According to the superseding indictment, Hutchinson frequently obtained the cash used to bribe HISD officials by writing checks to vendors, who would then cash the checks and provide Hutchinson with the cash. On the memo line, Hutchinson falsely stated that the payments were for work performed at HISD properties and deducted the amounts from his business tax returns, prosecutors say.
Prosecutors allege that Busby concealed his role in the scheme by depositing the cash he received from Hutchison into multiple bank accounts and by filing fraudulent tax returns.
In addition to bribery, wire fraud, and tax fraud, Busby and Hutchinson face charges of witness tampering. The superseding indictment says that Busby pressured Hoskins to lie to FBI agents that he had not directed anyone to use specific contract vendors.
Hutchinson, meanwhile, allegedly encouraged Hoskins to lie to FBI agents that the payments in the so-called “bribe ledger” were actually gambling winnings and losses and to tell Hall and Tovar to give the same false testimony.
Busby devoted more than 20 years to Houston ISD, starting as a custodian and rising to general manager of facilities in 2016 before becoming chief operating officer in 2019, according to the Houston Chronicle. In that role, he oversaw several departments, including business operations, transportation, procurement and police.
Hutchison, who played three seasons in the National Football League and had 22 carries as a running back for the Chicago Bears and Buffalo Bills, faced a federal investigation into one of his landscaping companies in the late 1980s, as reported by the Chronicle in 2020.
Federal agents alleged then, according to the Chronicle, that he and a co-worker provided fraudulent Social Security and resident alien cards to the government to hire employees who were not legally residing in the country.
A jury ultimately convicted Hutchison on five counts. In 1990, U.S. District Judge Kenneth Hoyt—who remains on the bench—sentenced him to 60 days in jail, followed by eight months of home detention, five years of probation, and a fine of $2,000.
Jury selection for the case against Busby and Hutchison begins on Monday, with opening arguments expected to start as early as Tuesday.
Monroe Trombly is a public safety reporter for the Landing covering federal courts and the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Houston. Find him @monroetrombly on X, or reach him directly at monroe@houstonlanding.org.
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