Two Pennsylvania judges charged with taking millions of dollars in kickbacks to send youth offenders to privately run detention centers pleaded guilty to fraud Thursday in one of the most stunning cases of judicial corruption on record. Prosecutors allege Luzerne County Judges Mark Ciavarella and Michael Conahan took $2.6 million in payoffs to put juvenile offenders in lockups run by PA Child Care LLC and a sister company, possibly tainting the convictions of thousands of juvenile offenders. The judges pleaded guilty in federal court in Scranton to honest services fraud and tax fraud. Their plea agreements call for sentences of more than seven years in prison. They were permitted to remain free pending sentencing. The gray-haired jurists said little at Thursday’s hearing, and declined to comment to reporters afterward. Prosecutors described a scheme in which Conahan, the former president judge of Luzerne County, shut down the county-owned juvenile detention center in 2002 and signed an agreement with PA Child Care LLC to send youth offenders to its new facility outside Wilkes-Barre.

Ciavarella, who presided over juvenile court, sent youths to the detention center while he was taking payments, prosecutors said.
For years, youth advocacy groups complained that Ciavarella was ridiculously harsh and ran roughshod over youngsters’ constitutional rights. Ciavarella sent a quarter of his juvenile defendants to detention centers from 2002 to 2006, compared with a statewide rate of one in 10. Among the offenders were teenagers who were locked up for months for stealing loose change from cars, writing a prank note and possessing drug paraphernalia. Many had never been in trouble before, and some were imprisoned even after probation officers recommended against it. Many of the youths didn’t have attorneys.

Ciavarella has specifically denied sending kids to jail for cash, and had indicated he would not go through with the guilty plea if the government offered that as evidence. Thus prosecutors left out any mention Thursday of a quid pro quo, presenting only enough evidence to establish that crimes had occurred. But Assistant U.S. Attorney Gordon Zubron said after the hearing that the government continues to allege a quid pro quo. “We’re not negotiating that, no. We’re not backing off,” he said. The prosecutor said it will be up to U.S. District Judge Edwin Kosik to settle the matter. Kosik could reject the proposed sentence as too light if he decides there was a quid pro quo.

“I think there will be significant disagreements as to what the facts are,” Zubrod said. “Was there a connection between the payments and the money, and young people going to prison? Those are issues that are going to be addressed later by the court. There’s going to be plenty of time to fight about that.” The judges were charged on Jan. 26 and removed from the bench by the Pennsylvania Supreme Court shortly afterward. Fifteen-year-old Bernadine Wallace was sentenced to a month in lock-up for a threatening note she posted on her MySpace page, reports CBS News correspondent Seth Doane. “I was thinking to myself, ‘I don’t deserve this. I don’t think that I did that much wrong. I’m not a criminal’,” she said. “You saw the judges come out of court today. How were you feeling?” Doane asked Wallace’s mother. “Angry,” Flo Wallace said. “How did they get to walk out with all these charges? When she went in front of them, she got out of shackles.”

Kurt Kruger, now 22, had never been in trouble with the law until the day police accused him of acting as a lookout while his friend shoplifted less than $200 worth of DVDs from Wal-Mart. He said he didn’t know his friend was going to steal anything. Kruger pleaded guilty before Ciavarella and spent three days in a company-run juvenile detention center, plus four months at a youth wilderness camp run by a different operator. “Never in a million years did I think that I would actually get sent away. I was completely destroyed,” said Kruger, who later dropped out of school. He said he wants to get his record expunged, earn his high school equivalency diploma and go to college. “I got a raw deal, and yeah, it’s not fair,” he said, “but now it’s 100 times bigger than me.”

On December 4, 1875, William Marcy “Boss” Tweed, notorious leader of New York City’s Democratic political machine, escaped from prison and fled to Europe. Between 1865 and 1871, Boss Tweed and his cronies stole millions of dollars from the city treasury. Convicted of forgery and larceny in 1873, Tweed was released in 1875. Immediately rearrested on civil charges, he was allowed daily visits to his family in the company of his jailor. On one of these trips, Tweed made his escape.

Elected an alderman in 1851, the former bookkeeper and volunteer fireman worked his way up New York City’s Democratic hierarchy by holding various elected and unelected positions in the municipal government. He served one congressional term, but operated most effectively at the state level. By 1868, the year he gained a seat in the New York senate, Tweed firmly controlled the state Democratic Party. Two years later, he maneuvered passage of a revised city charter. A newly instituted board of audit became the principle means by which the Boss and his friends siphoned the city treasury of between twenty million and two-hundred million dollars.

The movement to overthrow the “Tweed Ring” included the New York Times, Harper’s Weekly cartoonist Thomas Nast, and reforming Democrat Samuel J. Tilden. On July 22, 1871, the newspaper began publishing an exposé of the Tweed Ring’s activities. Nast followed up with cartoons roasting Tweed. “Let’s stop them damned pictures,” the Boss supposedly said, “I don’t care so much what the papers write about—my constituents can’t read—but damn it, they can see pictures.” Despite bribes and threats, Nast continued to lambast Tweed weekly on the pages of Harper’s. Meanwhile, Tilden’s efforts to oust Tweed solidified his name as a reformer—a reputation that made him Governor of New York in 1874 and nearly put him in the White House in 1877.

With his 1873 conviction behind him, Tweed was sued by New York State for $6 million. Held in debtor’s prison until he could post half that amount as bail, the former boss had few options. Still wealthy, his prison cell was fairly luxurious. Yet Tweed was determined to escape. Fleeing to Spain, he worked as a common seaman on a Spanish ship until recognized by his likeness to a Nast cartoon and captured. Extradited to New York, William Marcy Tweed died in debtor’s prison on April 12, 1878.

Boss Tweed, acting as a policeman, although wearing the uniform of a convict, holds two boys by the collar with one hand, and carries a billy club in the other. Reform Tweed: “If all the people want is to have somebody arrested, I’ll have you plunderers convicted. You will be allowed to escape; nobody will be hurt; and then Tilden will go to the White House, and I to Albany as Governor.”

The political machine that created Boss Tweed and that Tweed strengthened remained a powerful force in New York City politics. Through a system of patronage and charity, Tammany Hall, the executive committee of the New York City Democratic Party, commanded the allegiance of many voters. Lacking a government safety net, poor citizens relied on the party for access to employment, or for help with funeral expenses. Public works projects like Central Park provided politicians with patronage opportunities ranging from lucrative contracts to day work digging ditches.

Mayors, lawmakers, others accused of taking bribes to influence contracts
The Associated Press updated 7:55 p.m. ET, Thurs., Sept. 6, 2007

TRENTON, N.J. – FBI agents arrested 11 public officials in towns across New Jersey Thursday on charges of taking bribes in exchange for influencing the awarding of public contracts, the U.S. Attorney’s Office said.
Two of those arrested are state lawmakers, two are mayors, three are city councilmen and several served on the school board in Pleasantville, where the scandal began.
All 11, plus a private individual, are accused of taking cash payments of $1,500 to $17,500 to influence who received public contracts, according to criminal complaints.
“Today we witnessed another example of the disease that affects the state of New Jersey; the disease of public corruption that spread like wildfire from south to north,” said the U.S. attorney for New Jersey, Christopher J. Christie.

All 12 suspects, wearing handcuffs and leg shackles, made initial court appearances on Thursday afternoon. The charges against them were explained, they were advised of their rights and a $200,000 unsecured bond — to be paid only if they miss a court appearance — was set for each.

A federal complaint charges each of the 12 with accepting payments from companies that offered insurance and roofing services to cities and school districts, said Michael Drewniak, a spokesman for Christie.

FBI went undercover in probe
The investigation began last year with Pleasantville schools, near Atlantic City, Drewniak said. The FBI established an undercover insurance brokerage company purporting to employ the government’s two cooperating witnesses and undercover agents.

The probe widened when Pleasantville school board members referred the cooperating witnesses to public officials in northern New Jersey, Drewniak said.

Democratic state Assemblymen Mims Hackett Jr. and Alfred E. Steele were arrested, as was Passaic Mayor Samuel Rivera. Also arrested were Keith Reid, the chief of staff to Newark’s City Council president; Passaic councilmen Jonathan Soto and Marcellus Jackson; two current Pleasantville school board members, three former board members and a private citizen. One of the former school board members is now a Pleasantville city councilman.

“This is another sad day for the people of New Jersey,” said Assembly Minority Leader Alex DeCroce. “Once again, New Jersey’s culture of corruption is national news.”

Rivera is a former police officer and professional wrestler.

Hackett, 65, is both a legislator and mayor of Orange, a city of about 33,000 residents 15 miles west of New York City. He was convicted of kidnapping in 1975 and sentenced to 30 years in prison, but was pardoned a year later when the victim recanted and Hackett’s cousin confessed.

Hackett is accused of accepting $5,000 in bribes, according to the complaint.

A phone message left at Hackett’s office wasn’t immediately returned Thursday. Neither were messages left at Reid’s and Rivera’s offices.

‘A horrible day in Pleasantville’
Steele, an assemblyman since 1996 and deputy speaker since 2002, also serves as a Baptist minister in Paterson. He’s charged with accepting $14,000 in bribes, according to the complaint. He had been Passaic County undersheriff but resigned from the $89,900-per-year post on Thursday, said sheriff’s spokesman Bill Maer.

Jenna Pollard, who answered the phone at Steele’s office and identified herself as his chief of staff, said she had no comment and didn’t know if Steele had a lawyer.

One of the former school board members, Maurice “Pete” Callaway, is now a Pleasantville city councilman and the brother of former Atlantic City Council President Craig Callaway, who is serving time in federal prison from stemming from an unrelated corruption scheme.

“It’s just a horrible day in Pleasantville,” said John Deserable, a monitor sent by the state Department of Education to oversee the district’s finances. “It’s another black eye to the district that we don’t need. The children deserve better than this.”

Thursday’s arrests were the latest in an anti-corruption campaign waged by Christie’s office.

More than 100 public officials in the state have been convicted on federal corruption charges in the last five years. Two other Democratic state senators, Wayne Bryant of Lawnside and Sharpe James of Newark, are among others facing pending corruption charges.

There are several types of political corruption that occur in local government. Some are more common than others, and some are more prevalent to local governments than to larger segments of government. Local governments may be more susceptible to corruption because interactions between private individuals and officials happen at greater levels of intimacy and with more frequency at more decentralized levels. Forms of corruption pertaining to money like bribery, extortion, embezzlement, and graft are found in local government systems. Other forms of political corruption are nepotism and patronage systems. One historical example was the Black Horse Cavalry a group of New York state legislators accused of blackmailing corporations.

Bribery is the offering of something which is most often money but can also be goods or services in order to gain an unfair advantage. Common advantages can be to sway a person’s opinion, action, or decision, reduce amounts fees collected, speed up a government grants, or change outcomes of legal processes.

Extortion is threatening or inflicting harm to a person, their reputation, or their property in order to unjustly obtain money, actions, services, or other goods from that person. Blackmail is a form of extortion.

Embezzlement is the illegal taking or appropriation of money or property that has been entrusted to a person but is actually owned by another. In political terms this is called graft which is when a political office holder unlawfully uses public funds for personal purposes.

Nepotism is the practice or inclination to favor a group or person who is a relative when giving promotions, jobs, raises, and other benefits to employees. This is often based on the concept of familism which is believing that a person must always respect and favor family in all situations including those pertaining to politics and business. This leads some political officials to give privileges and positions of authority to relatives based on relationships and regardless of their actual abilities.

Patronage systems consist of the granting favors, contracts, or appointments to positions by a local public office holder or candidate for a political office in return for political support. Many times patronage is used to gain support and votes in elections or in passing legislation. Patronage systems disregard the formal rules of a local government and use personal instead of formalized channels to gain an advantage.

excerpts from: www.Wikipedia.org