July 20, 2015

Carswell Federal Medical Center

I will be referred to as federal inmate # 19677-026 in the Carswell Federal Medical Center on July 22, 2015. The road that led to this has been long and filled with many regrets, sorrow, sleepless nights and feelings of my being lost in a parallel universe.

As a child I was extremely talented in the arts. I always knew that someday I would be rich and famous! When I graduated from high school, I opted not to accept a partial scholarship to attend a college in New Orleans. From that point I worked at a local trucking company and attended a local junior college. I graduated from college on time and over the next ten years worked in management and human resources. Also during this period I got married had two wonderful children and completed my master’s degree.

I wanted a greater challenge so I enrolled in a part-time law program and worked full-time. The combination of the two was extremely challenging, but I was committed. I graduated from law school at the bottom of my class. During the four-year journey of law school I got divorced. Juggling parenthood held a high level and very stressful position as a vice-president at a telecommunications company. Failure never frightened me. That’s why, I think, I was able to bounce back up after failing the bar by as little 3 points on each of my two attempts before I finally passed it.

I had no intention of ever practicing law full-time. But sometimes life throws you curve balls and you catch them. I hung out my shingle fresh out of law school and learned through the school of “practice” yes the “practice of law”.

It was exhilarating and accelerated the birth of my premature graying hair. Sometimes clients would pay; other times you would be grateful for pocket change.

After a while I realized that being a solo practitioner would not generate the money and life style that I had dreamed of for my family and me.

I begin to diversify. Everyone that knew me knew I was a creative and energetic trainer. I had the ability to captivate an audience and make the class and subject matter that I was training in come to life.

I was provided with an opportunity to earn a lot of money providing community training on a variety of heath and preventative care topics. I loved it! I would have done it for free—if I could have afforded it.

The training was done, I had a ball BUT I also engaged in a crime. I agreed to give the person who provided the opportunity for my training adventure almost ½ of what I received. That was fine by me. I was making a boat- load of money so I didn’t have to be greedy, I didn’t object to sharing it. However, this sharing of the funds amounted to me agreeing to my pleading guilty to 1 count of theft, bribery, kickback and 1 count of tax fraud. I will get into more details of my crime in later blogs.

For now, I will say that when the government comes knocking you have to answer. I knew I had to tell the truth. So, I did. At sentencing I was given a 25 month federal prison sentence and was ordered to pay restitution $1,172,000.

This conviction has cost me dearly. I agreed to surrender my real estate broker’s license, my law license and my otherwise great reputation. There were many days before I had the opportunity to tell the truth about my actions that my head just wanted to explode. I lived in utter fear from the first knock at my door in 2009 until I had the opportunity to admit my guilt several years later. Every cell in my body seemed to want to explode with terror, grief, shame, fear of the unknown, anxiety, insomnia, financial strain and embarrassment. There were many dark days during this life altering experience but with love, support, acceptance of responsibility and forgiveness you can triumph.

I look forward to writing more in the future.

Best,

Roxanne Jackson

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