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Saturday, June 10, 2006

Ind. Courts - Former Schererville Town Court judge admits extortion

The Gary Post-Tribune reports today, in a story by Tim Zorn:

HAMMOND — Deborah Riga, the former Schererville Town Court judge, admitted Friday that she systematically defrauded the town during her time on the bench.

Riga pleaded guilty in U.S. District Court to four of the eight counts in the federal indictment against her.

She also agreed to cooperate with U.S. Attorney Joseph Van Bokkelen’s continuing public-corruption investigation.

A federal grand jury indicted Riga in August 2004. Her trial was scheduled to start Tuesday.

The U.S. attorney’s office will ask the court to dismiss four other counts against Riga when she is sentenced Sept. 8 by Judge Philip Simon.

Riga, who lives now in Sarasota, Fla., will remain free on bond until the sentencing.

Riga was judge of Schererville’s town court — which hears traffic offenses, minor drug and alcohol cases and small-claims cases — from January 2000 through December 2003.

She admitted, in Friday’s plea agreement, that she “devised a scheme to defraud the public and the Town of Schererville of their right to my honest services” when she was judge.

She said she took control of the court’s Crossroads counseling program and driving school and set up a bank account in which she secretly had an interest.

Through that, she received about $12,000 in payments from the court’s defendants. She also stopped paying rent to the town for her courtroom and made the town pay court employees who should have been paid out of the Crossroads program, Riga said.

Each mail-fraud charge Riga admitted to carries a maximum term of 20 years, but the U.S. attorney agreed to a sentence “at the low end” of the sentence range.

Riga also is to make restitution to the town, but the agreement doesn’t specify the amount. One count to be dismissed is a charge that Riga made Nancy Fromm — whose Addiction and Family Care firm provided court-ordered counseling — pay $2,000 to Riga’s father to continue doing business. * * *

The current Schererville Town Court judge, Kenneth Anderson, defeated Riga in a closely contested Democratic primary election in May 2003.

Riga originally was declared the winner by 11 votes, but that result was overturned when Anderson showed that 22 absentee votes were fraudulent.

Here is an earlier ILB entry from Aug. 6, 2004, and more details from Aug. 7th, 2004.

Here is the coverage from the Munster (NW Indiana) Times, by Jon Carlspn. He writes:

Deborah Riga, who once presided over hundreds of small-time offenders as the judge of Schererville Town Court, is probably heading for jail herself.

On the eve of her public corruption trial next week, Riga pleaded guilty Friday afternoon to four counts of felony mail fraud.

Federal prosecutors agreed to drop four other charges against her two years ago, including one count of extortion, in exchange for her guilty plea and cooperation in future investigations.

"I'm saddened that it came to that, and that there was a problem in Schererville," said sitting Town Judge Kenneth Anderson, whose contested election victory over Riga in 2003 spurred the federal probe.

Federal and state investigators accused Riga of concealing profits she earned by sending criminal offenders in her court to two counseling services that she controlled. She pleaded guilty to sending notices through the mail to offenders in her programs.

Riga, 49, faces a maximum penalty of 80 years in prison and $1 million in fines, although her actual sentence will be decided through sentencing guidelines during a hearing in September.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Orest Szewciw said her sentence will be adjusted downward based on how much she cooperates with investigators in future probes.

"It's just one part of what this office is about, in terms of fulfilling its obligation to root out political corruption," Szewciw said, adding that four agents from the FBI and state police worked "tirelessly" to assemble the case.

Posted by Marcia Oddi on June 10, 2006 10:23 PM
Posted to Indiana Courts