Former NFL, U.Va. football player indicted on embezzlement charges

Real estate developer Christopher A. Harrison, a former University of Virginia and NFL football player, was indicted last week on federal embezzlement charges connected to a downtown Richmond residential project and Petersburg’s former Ramada Inn, which he purchased in 2018 to redevelop.

According to a news release by the U.S. Department of Justice, a grand jury at the Eastern District of Virginia federal court returned an indictment Oct. 15 against Harrison, charging him with wire fraud and mail fraud, which carry a maximum 20-year prison sentence; engaging in monetary transactions with criminally derived property, which has a maximum sentence of 10 years; and aggravated identity theft, which has a mandatory minimum prison term of two years.

A Washington, D.C., resident, Harrison allegedly used more than $22 million in bank loans for development and construction of two development projects in Richmond and Winston-Salem, North Carolina, for other uses, including expenses related to the Petersburg Ramada Inn.

The DOJ alleges that Harrison secured a $14.4 million loan from Cedar Rapids Bank & Trust to redevelop the Model Tobacco building, a downtown Richmond residence in which his company was investing $59 million to build 203 high-end apartments. He also secured a $7.7 million loan for Whitaker Park, a Winston-Salem residential development project.

Instead of using the funds for those projects, “Harrison skimmed loan proceeds … by first creating a straw demolition company, Virginia Demolition LLC, that had no employees, demolition equipment or office space,” according to the DOJ. He allegedly forged and falsified documents that purported to show that Virginia Demolition had done actual work on the two commercial real estate projects, and “is alleged to have doctored and inflated invoices in the name of a separate construction vendor for Model Tobacco, inducing CRBT to disburse inflated loan amounts. In total, Harrison allegedly submitted over a dozen falsified invoices and lien waivers in draw requests to induce CRBT to disburse over $3.6 million in loan proceeds to Harrison to satisfy purported expenditures.”

Some of that money, the DOJ alleges, went toward expenses related to the shuttered Petersburg Ramada Inn, which Harrison purchased in 2018 and promised to replace with a $20 million multiuse development that included a hotel, 100 apartments and retail space. However, in 2021, the City of Petersburg sued Harrison’s company, C.A. Harrison Cos., after the former hotel — considered an eyesore — was still standing. In 2020, Harrison said he had trouble financing the Petersburg project after he lost a $5 million tourism grant from the city, and in 2022, he sold the property back to the city.

According to the DOJ, he “allegedly used fraud proceeds to pay legal fees to a law firm for Harrison’s litigation against the City of Petersburg pertaining to the project,” as well as for personal use, including Rolex watches, mortgage payments, home landscaping, and tuition and tutoring for his child.