Former Westinghouse executive Jeffrey Benjamin was sentenced on Wednesday to a year and one day in federal prison for his role in the $9 billion V.C. Summer nuclear site failure.
U.S. District Judge Mary Geiger Lewis also tacked a $100,000 fine onto Benjamin's sentence, handed down at the federal courthouse in Columbia. Federal prosecutors said due to the law, if he behaves, Benjamin will likely only serve roughly 10 months in prison.
Benjamin's attorney, William Sullivan, requested that Benjamin serve his sentence at the minimum-security federal prison in Pensacola. It's unclear when his sentence will start.
The 62-year-old was responsible for overseeing the construction of two new nuclear reactors at the Fairfield County site as part of a contract between Westinghouse and what was formerly SCANA Corp. and state-owned utility Santee Cooper.
Months after Westinghouse declared bankruptcy in March 2017, the V.C. Summer site was abandoned due to cost overruns and delays that resulted in the loss of thousands of jobs and the downfall of a major South Carolina utility company and its leaders.
The fiasco became the focus of legislative hearings and a sprawling federal investigation that led to charges for four utility executives, which included Benjamin, who at the time was senior vice president for new plants and projects at Westinghouse.
Federal prosecutor Winston Holliday called Benjamin the "worst" of the defendants, telling the judge Wednesday that Benjamin was intimately tied to every detail of the nuclear site project.
Federal prosecutors said Benjamin knew about the cost overruns and delays at the Jenkinsville site that started years before the public was made aware of its failure, but that he lied to utility executives, regulators and others and never sought to correct the record. Meanwhile, ratepayers unknowingly continued to foot the bill, and still do today, they said.
"It took a village to kill the V.C. Summer project," Holliday told Lewis. "But there are chiefs."
Lewis' sentencing capped a four-hour hearing that turned oftentimes animated and testy.
Throughout her sentencing remarks — Lewis repeatedly called the project a "fiasco," a "disaster" and a "mess" — Benjamin shook his head as Lewis characterized his crime, saying his "dishonesty is undeniable."
Benjamin ultimately pleaded guilty last year as part of a plea agreement to "aiding and abetting the failure to keep accurate corporate records."
He apologized Wednesday for his role in the project's collapse and said he accepted responsibility. He told the judge he did have a different view of how it was managed.
"I have a lot of professional pride," he said, adding he believed that he was acting in good faith and was honest at the time. "I'm not the person I am painted out to be."
He added that he hopes someday someone can finish the project.
Holliday told reporters after court that he did not buy Benjamin's remorse.
"I thought multiple times he reinforced that he blames other people," he said. "He came kicking and screaming into the courthouse. And I think that’s how he left the courthouse."
Lewis said in her sentencing calculations she considered the 23 character letters she received on behalf of Benjamin, and the testimony given by his former colleagues, his friends and his wife, Colleen, asking the judge to give Benjamin probation, not prison.
Colleen Benjamin told Lewis she met Benjamin in 2018, and found him to be an honorable, loyal and trustworthy man. She said Benjamin had expressed remorse.
She said Benjamin speaks regularly to his five children, and cares for his mother and step-father. Both are in their 90s.
She also told Lewis she has suffered through this process.
She lost her husband to pancreatic cancer, and now worries Benjamin's heart condition, which resulted in surgery this year, could hurt his chances of survival in prison.
Benjamin's health and his lack of prior criminal history were other parts of the judge's sentencing calculation, she said.
The letters and testimony did not go unnoticed, some of which was touching, Lewis said.
But the sentence, she said, "needs to promote respect of the law" and she said be a deterrent to others in the C-suite.
"I don't think probation is appropriate," Lewis said.
Benjamin's sentencing ends the multi-year criminal trials of four utility executives involved in the V.C. Summer nuclear site collapse: former SCANA CEO Kevin Marsh and Chief Operating Office Stephen Byrne and former Westinghouse executives Carl Churchman and Benjamin. Churchman is the only one of the four given home detention.
"Deterrence is everything in this matter," Holliday told reporters after court. "Not only to deter him (Benjamin) as he gets back into whatever industry that he's going to work in, but also corporate executives in general, ... that when they are caught that they will face significant consequences."
Holliday said they hope this chapter in the nuclear site downfall is "finished."
