Ex-Indiana Lawmaker in Casino Dark Money Case Claims Federal Stitch Up
A former Robert Indiana nation senator imprisoned in August 2022 for accepting illegal take the field donations from a gambling casino fellowship executive claims he was stitched up by federal prosecutors. He is also blaming his lawyer for putting him inwards the slammer, IndyStar reports.
Republican Brent Waltz served septenary months inward prison house after pleading guilty to 2 felony counts of making and receiving conduit contributions and fabrication to the FBI. He has since been released and is currently on probation.
As piece of his plea deal, Waltz admitted receiving $40,500 inwards dark-money effort contributions from John Keeler in 2016.
Keeler is also an ex-Republican country senator who was at the clip superior general counsel and vice chair for Centaur Gaming. Centaur owned the IN Grand and Hoosier Park racinos, which it sold to Caesars inwards 2018.
Keeler was sentenced to ii months inward prison inward 2022 after pleading guilty to filing a mistaken assess return. This accuse was related to to his role in funneling money from Centaur to Kelley Rogers, a political consultant working on Waltz’s congressional campaign.
Innocence Claim
But inward an affidavit filed to the US District Court for the Southern District of Louisiana, Waltz asserted he was “innocent of all charges.”
He said he had believed the prosecutors’ title was “weak” because Carl Rogers had told the FBI he had “intentionally hid his illegal acts from [Waltz] and did not trust [Waltz] was aware of those illegal acts,” according to the affidavit.
Waltz claimed in the filing he was prepared to scrap all the charges at trial, but was also worried that a jury mightiness side with prosecutors. So he in agreement(p) to a plea deal that would knock off triplet additional charges. Unknown to him, the trade was tailormade to land him inwards prison, according to the affidavit.
The business deal required that Waltz plead shamed to lawlessly accepting $40,500 from Centaur, a figure that Walz claimed was mystifying to him, since the factual enter was less than that.
It also mystified his lawyer, who should make realized that confessing to to a lesser extent than $40K in illegal donations could make led to a lesser prison sentence, or no more prison clip at all.
With anything over $40K, at that place is a “presumption of imprisonment,” according to the filing.
Waltz claims that federal prosecutors cooked upward the $40,500 specifically to terra firma him inwards prison and that “no i present during the accord discussions,” including his lawyer was aware of this. That’s according to Waltz’s new attorney, Ibrahim Murphy, inwards the filing.
Waltz’s former attorney, Bertrand Arthur William Russell Johnson, admits that he “did non research the issue” during plea negotiations, according to the affidavit.
Hard John Rock Project
After Caesars bought up Centaur’s Indiana properties, Keeler formed Spectacle Gaming with former Centaur CEO Rod Ratcliff. The young fellowship owned the Majestic Star Casino inward Gary and worked with Hard Rock International to make a land-based gambling casino inwards the northwest Hoosier State city.
In January 2020, to a lesser extent than a month after Spectacle and Hard John Rock International stony-broke run aground on the project, country regulators announced Keeler was under investigation for funneling collective money to politicians.
Keeler and Ratcliff were at long last removed from Spectacle, and a restructuring of the company made it a minority shareholder inward what became the Hard John Rock Casino Northern Indiana.
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