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As former FCI Dublin guard Darrell Wayne Smith awaits a verdict in his protracted sexual abuse case, federal prosecutors have opened a new investigation into his finances, spurred by his wife’s defense testimony.
The government has found at least $800,000 in assets moved out of Smith’s name in the months preceding and since his indictment, according to the U.S. attorney’s office, raising questions about a financial affidavit he signed in 2023 indicating that he owned $0 in “other property” assets. That affidavit allowed Smith to qualify for court assistance paying for his representation.
“Looking at the finances from the affidavit … that doesn’t … where is this money?” Assistant U.S. Attorney Sailaja Paidipaty asked during a hearing in federal court in Oakland on Tuesday.
The investigation into whether Smith misled the court about his financial situation under oath comes as a jury enters its second week deliberating his fate in a retrial on charges of sexual abuse against four women under his care as a prison guard at FCI Dublin. He has maintained his innocence throughout the proceedings.
He’s the last of 10 former employees at the shuttered East Bay prison who have been charged with sexual misconduct there in connection to a yearslong FBI investigation. The other nine have been convicted.
Much of Smith’s retrial has mirrored the first, which ended in a mistrial due to a hung jury on 15 charges against him. But on the final day of his defense case last week, his wife, Carla Sisi-Smith, testified for the first time.
She told the court that his previous demotion from a correctional officer to guard at Dublin put a financial strain on their family, which appeared to be an effort to explain why he began picking up better-compensated overnight shifts. Those shifts meant he would work alone in the housing units in which he’s alleged to have assaulted women.
Her testimony, however, also inadvertently opened the door to the couple’s finances. Prosecutors showed a number of Sisi-Smith’s financial records from those same years after his demotion, which included rentals and sales of property the couple owned. The transactions, they said, were worth more than Smith’s $6,000 pay cut.
U.S. District Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers demanded Tuesday’s hearing on Smith’s finances after prosecutors showed documents indicating that Smith and his wife have transferred numerous properties and vehicles out of his name and into hers since 2023. She said last week that the evidence showed discrepancies with the financial affidavit he signed.
“It is deeply concerning,” Gonzalez Rogers said Tuesday.
During testimony at trial last week, Paidipaty revealed that around the time Smith was charged in 2023, the couple moved multiple properties they owned and rented under an LLC managed by Smith into Sisi-Smith’s name, exclusively.
A month after a second indictment levied additional charges against him, a year later, over a dozen more of the couple’s rental properties were transferred to Sisi-Smith’s name, and the government alleged that three cars were also transferred from Smith’s to Sisi-Smith’s name around the same time. She denied that claim.
The LLC the couple ran their rental home business under has now been dissolved, Sisi-Smith said.
According to court documents, Sisi-Smith indicated in her testimony that the couple’s “motivation for the transfer was to protect their assets from potential claims arising from the allegations emanating by inmates at FCI Dublin.”
On Tuesday, Paidipaty said since the close of evidence, the government’s financial investigation has also revealed that two months before his arrest, Smith sold a property for more than $900,000.
Although prosecutors do not have evidence that Smith knew he would be indicted ahead of time, Assistant U.S. Attorney Andrew Paulson noted during the hearing that he had made large financial moves in the two days before his arrest.
The day before his arrest and indictment, a simplified divorce dissolution for Smith and Sisi-Smith’s marriage was filed. The couple appears to still be legally married.
The day before the divorce filing and two days before his indictment, Paidipaty said Smith got a text from another officer saying that an attorney planned to file allegedly false complaints against numerous employees.
According to Paidipaty, for the year leading up to his indictment, while Smith was on a disability leave from FCI Dublin and living in Florida, he was communicating with at least three guards at the prison on an ongoing basis about the state of the investigation.
Although the conversations appear casual in isolation, she said, “taken together, it seems to be an escalation to see who’s being walked off [by the FBI], who’s confessed … what the union is doing.”
Since Smith’s arrest, more properties have also been moved out of his name.
Paidipaty said Smith’s primary home in Florida, worth about half a million dollars when purchased, was transferred from his name to Sisi-Smith’s in the month after his indictment, and another month later, a second home where their daughter lives, which is worth $247,000, was transferred from the rental LLC to Sisi-Smith’s name.
After a superseding indictment in August 2024, 29 more properties, some of which appear to be empty lots, were transferred from the LLC into Sisi-Smith’s name. The government alleged last week that three cars were also transferred from Smith’s to Sisi-Smith’s name around the same time. She denied that claim.
About six months before his initial trial began in March, Smith reportedly pulled $79,000 in cash from various banks, and in June, after his first trial, Smith purchased a $96,000 car, about half of which was paid in cash.
After the government presented its new information, the proceedings in front of Gonzalez Rogers were sealed before the defense presented any case on Smith’s behalf. It’s unclear when she will come to a decision on Smith’s financial statements, but she said it would not be Tuesday.
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