PROVIDENCE -- Federal authorities filed criminal charges against Raymond E. Gallison Jr., Monday alleging the former House Finance Committee chairman robbed a dead man’s estate, a disabled person’s trust fund and from disadvantaged youth seeking help from the educational non-profit he worked for.

His take, prosecutors say, more than $660,000.

The charges – wire fraud, aggravated identity theft and filing false tax returns – could send Gallison, 64, of Bristol, to federal prison for at least two years and possibly twice that long as part of a guilty plea agreement also announced Monday morning by U.S. Attorney Peter Neronha.

“At bottom he lied and he stole, in a variety of ways and from a variety of people,” said Neronha. “Mr. Gallison was essentially stealing wherever he could. It [didn’t] matter if the person was deceased…or the person was disabled.”

Authorities say the charges that Gallison has admitted to essentially stem from three individual schemes:

That while working for the taxpayer-supported educational nonprofit called Alternative Education Programming (AEP), Gallison stole more than $64,575 earmarked to help disadvantaged youth attend the Community College of Rhode Island.

That he took $8,900 from a trust account of a disabled person to cover his theft from AEP. (Gallison had been appointed trustee to assure the long-term welfare of the disabled person.)

And that he devised various plots to steal $677,957 in stock from the estate of a supposed friend who had entrusted Gallison to serve as his will’s executor.

The charges were the result of an at least 10-month investigation which law enforcement officials initially said began with allegations that Gallison arranged meetings for a prostitute during his 16-year tenure as a lawmaker.

Officials say their investigation did not substantiate those prostitution allegations.

Gallison’s world imploded last March when state and federal investigators searched his home at 50 King Philip Ave., in Bristol.

That same month Neronha subpoenaed Barrington officials to produce the probate court file of the late Ray Medley to a federal grand jury for review.

Medley, a life-long bachelor, had named his “good friend" Gallison to be the executor of his will, and also identified nine charities and non-profits as beneficiaries to his estate.

Medley died at 65 in February 2012. Years passed without any of those beneficiaries receiving money as expected.

In early 2016, a representative of the Massasoit Historical Association, where Medley served as president for many years, shared her concerns with Thomas E. Wright, a former assistant U.S. Attorney and friend of Medley’s.

Wright told the Journal last summer that he immediately became suspicious that “something is wrong here” when he looked at the will’s inventory. Missing were hundreds of thousands of dollars in stocks and bonds that he knew Medley had.

Meanwhile on another front, state and federal investigators were looking at Gallison’s running of the Providence-based AEP educational nonprofit.

Records show the college preparedness organization had received more than $2.2 million in state grants between 2003 and last year.

Gallison served on the House Finance Committee that approved many of those taxpayer-supported expenditures. In 2014 he rose to chair the committee – seven years after paying a $6,000 fine to the state Ethics Commission for not disclosing for three consecutive years the money he eared as an AEP employee.

Prosecutors alleged that while he served as AEP’s assistant director, Gallison vastly inflated the numbers of students the agency was helping to skim money out of the budget for himself.

Gallison headed AEP after its founder died in 2014. In 2015, AEP filed documents with the IRS that listed one woman, Aubrey Lombardo, as president, though the Providence lawyer told the Journal last May she never held that position and never signed the document that carried her signature.

And other documents filed with the state Secretary of State’s office named yet another woman, Mary Ellen Raposa, as its president.

During their investigation, agents and detectives searched Gallison’s State House office. Gallison visited State Police headquarters in Scituate and some lawmakers said they heard rumors he was wearing a wire. He wasn’t.

But on May 3, days after meeting with House Speaker Nicholas Mattiello and his chief of staff at a Newport Creamery in Cranston, Gallison resigned his seat after 16 years on Smith Hill.

Three days later the FBI seized $992,879 in assets in Gallison’s control, much of it stock shares connected to Medley’s estate.

Gallison is the third former state representative in as many weeks to face criminal charges.

The state police last week charged former state Rep. Peter Palumbo with violating campaign finance laws by embezzling from his campaign coffers and filing a false document.

Days earlier former Rep. John Carnevale – who was also the vice chairman of the House Finance Committee -- pleaded not guilty to three felony counts of perjury before the Providence Board of Canvassers regarding where he actually lived, and one count of filing a false document.

Monday’s announcement regarding Gallison resembled a similar news conference Neronha held in 2015 announcing criminal charges against former House Speaker Gordon Fox.

Fox also pleaded guilty and is now serving three years in federal prison for bribery, fraud and filing false tax returns.

Neronha voiced frustration with the repeated episodes of politicians violating their public oath to honorably serve.

"It shouldn't be that difficult to uphold that oath well. Everybody up here," he said, gesturing to the law enforcement officials surrounding him, "and many people beyond, do it every single day. It’s not that difficult. It really isn't, in my view."

"When you've stood here for seven and a half years and you're back here for the same thing over and over again, it’s a little frustrating, particularly when you have a lot of other things you could be doing.

State Attorney General Peter F. Kilmartin, who served in the General Assembly for 20 years, said, “I would like to tell the public that despite these high profile prosecutions…there are many good people who serve in our government.”

But while Kilmartin stressed these were individual cases, Neronha ended the news conference saying:"This says something about our political culture here which I think should get out attention."

(Correction: An earlier version of this report had the wrong total amount of money involved.)

-- This report was updated at 11:34 a.m.

tmooney@providencejournal.com

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On Twitter: @mooneyprojo