judge jailed for 28 years in ‘Kids for Cash’ Scam
If you can’t trust a judge to be fair and square? … and honest — who can you trust? -
Certainly not ex-Luzerne County (PA) juvenile court Judge Mark Ciavarella, 61 (right).
Another former judge, Michael Conahan, was also involved.
Ciavarella has been sentenced on Thursday to 28 years in prison for accepting payment to send kids s to a for-profit detention unit in a scandal dubbed “kids for cash,” says Reuters, going on, “Under the ” scheme, thousands of juveniles were shipped to the private center on minor or questionable charges by Ciavarella.
Another former judge, Michael Conahan, was also involved, according to juvenile advocates,says esays Reuters.
“Ciavarella abused his position of trust and inflicted a deep and lasting wound on the community he vowed to service,” US Attorney Peter Smith .
“The scheme involved a corrupt agreement with the operators of the for-profit juvenile facilities,” Smith said. “It was a wholesale arrangement in which the judges concealed their interest and thereby did great damage to the public.”
The U.S. Attorney’s office called the case the “largest and most sustained political corruption inquiry” in the area.
Ciavarella was convicted in February of 12 charges, including racketeering conspiracy and money laundering,” says the story, adding,.
“During the trial, Ciavarella testified that the money he received from Robert Mericle (bottom right), the facility’s developer, amounted to “finder fees” and had no connection to the fact that he was a sentencing judge.
Al Flora, Ciavarella’s attorney, said he would appeal.
Conahan, formerly the president judge of the Luzerne County court, has pleaded guilty to racketeering conspiracy and is awaiting sentencing.
Prosecutors said Conahan closed the publicly owned Luzerne County Juvenile Detention Facility and helped arrange financing for the private facility.
Both former judges obstructed efforts to investigate the county’s use of the private facility and also their financial relationships with Mericle and Robert Powell, the owner of the juvenile center, prosecutors said.
The U.S. Attorney’s office said more than 30 local and state government officials and contractors have been convicted or are awaiting trial in the case.
The story doesn’t say what will happen to the kids.
“The United States Department of Justice has announced that real estate mogul Robert Mericle has agreed to plead guilty in connection to the corruption at the Luzerne County courthouse, says the PA homepage ,The 46-year-old is president and CEO of Mericle Commercial Real Estate Services adding,
“According to the paperwork, Mericle knew about the ‘ cash for kids’ scheme involving judges Michael Conahan and Mark Ciaveralla.
Authorities say the two judges received more than 2 million dollars in connection to the construction of juvenile detention centers. We’re told Mericle knew about the crime and didn’t reveal it to investigators.
(Cheers, RW)
August 14th, 2011 at 9:58 pm
Word fail me on this one, the fact it has taken so long to halt this life changing abuse of young people is surely not a good sign of fair and impartial justice.
I know of no other country in the world that has seen this happen, its a near terminal body blow to the claim of being “the land of the free”, it clearly isnt.
I hope all those affected where able to move forward in their lives from this abuse and I hope none of the affected youths commited suicide under this despotic abuse of power, if that turns out to be the case manslaughter cases should be brought.
August 16th, 2011 at 12:02 am
This piece of garbage getting 28 years is the best thing I’ve read in a long time. Hopefully he doesn’t live to see the light of day, and his co-conspirators meet equal fates.
I’ve been following this case ever since it broke several months ago. I suspect it is occurring elsewhere too.
I HIGHLY suspect there are MUCH higher-up judges in the federal courts taking $$$ for all sorts of decisions. The RIAA/MPAA have shown in the past they are not above such dirty dealings.
NO court system is above question. One must be very suspicious of those we grant these powers to.
August 17th, 2011 at 12:10 pm
We have to clean up our society from top to bottom from all this scourge of parasites, the crappy cops, the crappy judges, the crappy attorney, the crappy bankers and others corporate criminals. There is a lot of work to do. Either the justice system do it or we will. Since we have no way to put these piece of shit in prison by ourselves this will hurt really bad! Their choices.
I hope that these two piece of judicial garbage never get out of prison alive.
I shiver thinking of all the poor kids they put in prison who did not deserve it.
August 22nd, 2011 at 6:06 am
This case, my friends, is a prime example of Naked Fascism Rampant.
“Fascism should rightly be called Corporatism, as it is the merger of corporate and government power.” – Benito Mussolini -
It is an unholy and hellish marriage, no matter how it is painted in any Corporate Mass Communications Medium. (viz. CNN, ABC, NBC, MSNBC, NYTimes, Wall Street Journal, etc etc etc.)
fact: On the signing of the American national Constitution, Benjamin Franklin was asked, “What manner of government have you given us?” His response was telling and prescient: “A Republic – if you can keep it.”
Fact: That Republic just might have slipped off the edge of the earth in 1913, when the Federal Reserve Bank (deceptively named because it is actually owned by private shareholders) was allowed to establish itself by then-president Woodrow Wilson. Once the power of control of the US currency was thus in due course abandoned by an already-corrupt Congress and instead officially granted to a Rothschild-affiliated institution (look ‘em up), multiple successive cycles of boomtime, bust-down and inflation of the National Money Supply took their inevitable toll.
Thus it is that the 1912 red copper penny’s purchasing power has become that of the 2011 paper dollar today. (Yes, that is so.)
Facts: Power reliably corrupts. Absolute power corrupts absolutely. The unholy Ciavarella+Conahan+Mericle “Business as Usual” triad was only made possible by the deliberate merger of a private for-profit interest (Mericle’s very own for-profit prison-house) with a long-trusted and popularly supported Government function – the administration of social justice under standing criminal law. Make no mistake: That Gang of Three made only one booboo insofar as America’s top-tier fascisti-in-office (they are HERE, yessiree!) are concerned: They Got Caught. So under the bus they go (ha ha haa) and all the Rest of Them breathe easy. (Make Way for the King!)
Their dirty little anti-Constitutional secret is safe tonight. But at a nominal rate of $200.00 per prisoner per day more/less (depending), there is ‘way too much Mammon to go around – so why refuse the dough, huh? So much for Justice! (Well, so what – it ain’t MY kid…)
Gentle Reader, if you have not been aware of this growing trend toward tortuous punishment-for-profit in your beloved America, you have not been paying attention since Reagan. For thirty years this Business Model has grown like a cancer or alien parasitic insect colony on the jugular vein of Decent Sensible Normal America’s moral body already!
So is one feeling helpless in the face of all this corruption and danger…? So unplug the Telly-Vision propaganda, lay off the Diet Soda, start eating healthful food instead of that Greasy Fast Stuff, and LOG INTO LIFE. Meet your neighbors – get active – and RE-UNITE with Genuine Reality!
Because a free Republic is a terrible thing to waste, and she is damn near dead today. But YOU are not. GET UP! And that is all. 0{:-|o<
August 25th, 2011 at 8:33 pm
Of course these shenanigans wont stop until corporations are prohibited from contributing to politicians election campaigns.
In fact, if we limited access to politicians to only those persons or companies with less than one hundred thousand per annum income, then we might see the corporate take-over of our elected officials decline.
Until however an honest politician does stand up to face the corporations head-on, these illegal “farming the citizenry” acts will continue.