Second person sentenced in $2.3M Maine prison fraud and kickback scheme
A 70-year-old Florida businesswoman who helped a former Maine prison official steal hundreds of thousands of dollars in public funds has been sentenced to six months in jail and ordered to pay $100,000 in restitution.
Melanie High pleaded guilty in July 2025 to robbery and theft charges in connection with a nearly decade-long scheme involving state-issued credit cards used to purchase cleaning and maintenance supplies from companies she owned or was associated with in Florida.
Her co-conspirator, Gerald Merrill, a former deputy superintendent at Maine prisons, pleaded guilty to the same charges in March. Merrill agreed to serve five years in prison and repay $500,000 — roughly the amount prosecutors say he received in "kickback benefits" from High.
Merrill worked for both Mountain View Correctional Facility in Charleston and Downeast Correctional Facility in Machiasport. From 2014 to 2023, prosecutors say, he used state procurement cards, known as P-cards, to make more than $2.39 million in purchases from five Florida companies connected to High: Southern Source Industries, A to Z Chemical Solutions, ACS Solutions, Starlite Supply, and Service Industries.
Two of those companies were registered to High herself, according to prosecutors. Another was registered to her daughter, and the remaining two were registered to known associates of High.
Many of the orders Merrill placed for cleaning and maintenance supplies never arrived, or were significantly less than what he reported, prosecutors said.
High, a Florida resident, spent five days in a Florida jail in 2023 following her arrest on the Maine charges before being released.
The case drew sharp criticism from prosecutors, who characterized the theft as extraordinary in scope.
"This intentional theft was on a scale rarely seen in Maine and constitutes official corruption of the most serious kind," Assistant Attorney General Charles Boyle wrote in sentencing records.
High's defense attorney, Timothy Zerillo, argued that his client played a smaller role in the scheme and that the true extent of the state's losses remained unclear. He also pointed to systemic failures within the Maine Department of Corrections, suggesting that poor financial controls enabled the fraud.
In court records, Zerillo wrote that the Department's Finance Division had access to all of the relevant supplier records, which should have flagged suspicious activity far sooner. Instead, he said, the lack of oversight allowed Merrill to exploit the system unchecked for years.
"The lack of financial controls allowed Mr. Merrill to exploit a lack of oversight," Zerillo wrote. "The discovery reflected that the expense reports, including the related invoices, were reviewed by someone other than Mr. Merrill."
The investigation into Merrill's spending began in 2022, after the Maine Office of the State Auditor reviewed how state employees were using P-cards. Detectives then examined Merrill's purchases, leading to criminal charges in late 2023.
A spokesperson for the Maine Department of Corrections said the agency conducted an internal investigation and cooperated with law enforcement throughout the criminal probe.
In the years since the scheme came to light, the state has overhauled how it manages employee spending. According to Sharon Huntley, a spokesperson for the Department of Administrative and Financial Services, all P-cards that were in use before 2024 have been returned and canceled after the state changed vendors. Every cardholder's recent transactions were reviewed, card limits adjusted, and the number of employees with P-cards has been reduced. The state has also narrowed what the cards can be used for.
Under the new system, P-card purchases must be approved monthly by a supervisor or finance official, with itemized receipts required. The state now conducts annual audits of all P-card transactions.
