INDIANAPOLIS (AP) — A federal choose on Wednesday sentenced a former Indiana lawmaker accused of pushing a invoice favoring a on line casino firm in trade for guarantees of employment to a yr and a day in jail.
Former state Rep. Sean Eberhart pleaded responsible to conspiring to commit fraud in November and agreed to pay $60,000 in restitution, roughly equal to his annual pay as a legislator. He confronted a most sentence of 5 years in jail however prosecutors really helpful leniency as a part of the plea deal, the Indianapolis Star reported.
Eberhart’s lawyer, Pat Cotter, declined to touch upon the sentencing when reached by The Related Press through e-mail.
Eberhart, a Republican, represented central Indiana’s Home District 57 for 16 years earlier than he left workplace in November 2022.
In response to court docket paperwork, an organization referred to as Spectacle Leisure was seeking to buy two casinos situated on Lake Michigan in Gary, Indiana, in 2018. The corporate needed to relocate the services to downtown Gary and to Vigo County in western Indiana. The Legislature handed a invoice approving the transfer in 2019.
Eberhart sat on the Home Committee on Public Coverage, which oversees casinos and playing in Indiana. Prosecutors accused him of utilizing his place to efficiently advocate for the relocation and acquire favorable phrases for the corporate, together with tax incentives, in trade for a future job that might pay at the very least $350,000 yearly.
The embattled on line casino firm has been the topic of a number of federal investigations lately.
In 2022, longtime on line casino government John Keeler was sentenced, together with former Indiana state Sen. Brent Waltz, for his or her function in a scheme to illegally funnel playing cash into the lawmaker’s unsuccessful 2016 bid for congress.
Keeler, who was a Republican legislator for 16 years within the Nineteen Eighties and Nineties, was sentenced to 2 months in federal jail and fined $55,000. The Indiana Gaming Fee pressured Spectacle officers to surrender their possession stakes in Gary and Terre Haute on line casino tasks following Keeler and Waltz’s indictments in 2020.
Waltz, a Republican from Greenwood, was sentenced to 10 months in federal jail for serving to route about $40,000 in unlawful contributions to his marketing campaign and making false statements to the FBI.
