Here are a few of the worst public officials out there!
9 - Sylvia Ash This New York State judge was arrested for
obstructing the federal criminal investigation of a credit union involved in a multi-million-dollar
embezzlement scheme.
But who happened to sit on the board of directors for the Credit Union?
Judge Sylvia Ash, of course.
The former CEO of Municipal Credit Union, Kam Wong, already pleaded guilty to siphoning
millions of dollars—millions that belonged to 500,000 members of the credit union—millions
that she spent on herself.
In the six years she served on its board, the judge received tens of thousands of dollars
for travel and other expenses from credit union coffers.
Federal prosecutors claim the judge helped cover up crimes committed by the credit union’s
CEO, and destroyed evidence by deleting text messages and wiping her iPhone.
In December of 2021, a jury found Judge Ash guilty of being the greediest judge in town.
She stepped down from her position and will probably never bang another gavel again.
8 - DOCTORS AND LAWYERS AND COPS What happens when doctors, lawyers and cops
join forces in crime?
How about a 100-million-dollar insurance scam.
It all went down in New York City in what feds called one of the biggest fraud busts
in history.
This is how it worked.
Police officers scoured computer databases for accident victims, who they’d refer for
treatment to specific doctors.
The doctors rendered unnecessary treatments and overbilled insurance companies under provisions
of the “No-Fault” motor vehicle accident laws.
In New York, insurance companies must pay for a victim’s medical bills when they're
involved in certain types of accidents.
In this case, when nobody’s “at fault” the insurance company gets left holding the
bag.
From the insurance companies, the money moved to an attorney charged with laundering it,
while a paralegal paid off officials and procured more leads to keep the scam going.
But who was at the head of this multi-million dollar operation?
Alexander “Little Alex” Gulkarov and Bradley Pierre led their respective gangs to swindle
a combined $100 million from insurance companies.
Their “gangs” were far from the conventional New York gangs you see in the movies.
These guys knew exactly how to scam insurance companies and get away with it for years at
a time.
Little Alex’s gang made off with about $30 million while Pierre took the lion’s share
at $70 million.
Still, their schemes came crashing down once the Justice Department got involved.
If convicted, all those involved could face decades behind bars.
7 - Bell, California This city is an incorporated city in Los Angeles
County with a population of about 35,000.
It gained some notoriety in March of 2000 when someone stole 55 Oscar statuettes from
a trucking company loading dock.
But what really put Bell on the map was a scandal involving its city leaders.
For a small blue-collar town, the city was paying its city manager an exorbitant salary
of 787,637 dollars a year.
For reference, that’s almost twice what the President of the United States makes.
But for Mr. Rizzo, this still wasn’t enough.
He gave himself regular raises, about 12% every year, until his annual pay was 1.5 million
dollars.
Even his assistant earned nearly 400,000 a year, more than what top administrators for
the city of Los Angeles make.
To generate the revenue needed to sustain his payroll, Rizzo illegally raised property
taxes, business license fees, sewage fees, and tax collection fees.
In one especially cynical move, Rizzo issued a 50-million-dollar bond (paid for by taxpayers)
for the construction of a new park.
But the park was never built.
The money was diverted to fund the salaries of the top city employees.
The amazing thing is that this wasn’t the first time Rizzo used his position to give
himself hefty raises.
He worked as the city manager of Hesperia, a small desert town in San Bernardino County,
east of Los Angeles, in 1988.
His salary that year was 76,000 dollars.
By 1992, when the town forced him to resign, he was earning $95,000 a year – that’s
a 25 percent increase in just four years.
The law eventually caught up with Robert Rizzo.
An audit by the California state controller’s office found that the tax increases levied
by Rizzo’s office were illegal.
Investigators found that many of the checks and balances regarding salary increases didn’t
exist in the city of Bell.
One prosecutor referred to Rizzo as “an unelected and unaccountable czar.”
In 2014, Robert Rizzo was sentenced to a 12-year prison stint for corruption, and a thirty-three
month federal term for tax evasion.
Six other city leaders, including his highly-paid assistant, also received convictions.
In all, Bell city leaders cost the citizens they were supposed to serve some fifteen million
dollars, and that’s only scratching the surface.
Check out this video for a more in-depth look into the crooked officials who scammed their
little town.
6 - Michael DiMassa A 30-year-old state representative with a
gambling addiction went to great lengths to bilk the city of West Haven of more than 600,000
dollars intended for COVID relief.
Connecticut State Representative Michael DiMassa, who was also a city employee, founded a sham
investment group with an unnamed business partner in January of 2021.
Starting the following month, DiMassa’s investment group began billing the city of
New Haven for consulting services it never performed.
The charges were purported to be for COVID-related “legal and site work”.
The billed fees, which ranged from 11,000 dollars to 87,000 dollars, amassed to a staggering
630,000 dollars in a seven-month period.
Some of the invoices coincided with DiMassa’s purchasing of poker chips at the Mohegan Sun
casino.
DiMassa was arrested on October 20, 2021, and resigned from his position with the State
of Connecticut a few days later.
It’s still unclear how he thought he’d get away with such a blatant scheme.
5 - Rodolfo Delgado One South Texas judge thought it might be
a good idea to start taking tips in exchange for good judgments.
Judge Rodolfo “Rudy” Delgado of Edinburg, Texas was convicted of conspiracy, bribery,
and obstruction of justice and sentenced to 60 months in federal prison in July 2019.
The charges came as a result of an FBI sting investigation involving attorney, Noe Perez,
who would routinely give the judge cash payments (sometimes as little as a few hundred dollars)
in return for favorable judgments.
The bribes from Perez over an eight-year period only amounted to some 20,000 dollars, which
is a measly amount to go to jail over.
Everything came crashing down in January of 2018 when Perez collaborated with an FBI sting
operation.
The federal officers recorded phone calls in which Perez offered the judge a bribe and
suggested they meet at a restaurant to exchange the transaction.
Perez, who was wearing a wire, handed Judge Rudy an envelope with 5,000 dollars in cash.
When the judge agreed to the deal, FBI agents swooped in to arrest Delgado.
Incredibly, despite the negative press coverage stemming from the sting operation, Judge Delgado
somehow managed to win re-election to the 13th Court of Appeals for the State of Texas
in 2018, a post he had to resign from as he awaited his own trial.
Wondering how he still got elected?
Check out this video for the full story!
4 - RAY NAGIN He was the former mayor of New Orleans, gained
national notoriety when Hurricane Katrina devastated the city in August of 2005.
However, Mayor Nagin’s scourge on the city began long before Katrina made landfall and
lasted well after the storm was gone.
Nagin was first elected in 2002, and stepped down from his post until 2010 due to term
limits.
For years, he used his position of leadership and power to obtain bribes from city contractors.
But one day the jig was up.
He was arrested, faced trial, and was found guilty of 20 out of 21 charges of wire fraud,
bribery and money laundering in July of 2014.
The court that sentenced him to 10 years in federal prison, which is well below the 15
to 20-year minimum, estimated that Nagin’s take exceeded half a million dollars.
The presiding judge, Helen Ginger Berrigan, explained her leniency by stating that Nagin
didn’t have a leadership role in the criminal conspiracy and that his crimes were motivated
in part by a deeply misguided desire to provide for those closest to him.
Which would seem to apply to almost every case of embezzlement.
Having exhausted his appeals, and now indigent and penniless, the former mayor reported to
the Federal Correctional Institution in Texarkana on September 8, 2014.
His earliest release date would have been May 25, 2023, but because of the Covid pandemic,
Ray Nagin was released to house arrest on April 27, 2020.
3 - Caren Turner It started as a routine traffic stop.
New Jersey police pulled over an SUV for having illegally tinted windows and a partially obstructed
rear license plate.
They issued a citation, as the driver didn’t have insurance and was driving with an expired
registration.
Though, to their credit, they were only teens, and probably didn’t know any better.
But things didn’t escalate until the underaged backseat passenger called her mother to come
to pick her up.
The girl’s mother, it turns out, was Caren Turner, the commissioner of the Port Authority
of New York and New Jersey and a former Hillary Clinton aide.
Not content with the usual, “Do you know who I am?”
line favored by most politicians, Commissioner Turner flashed her Port Authority badge to
the unimpressed officers.
Feeling slighted, she ripped into an 8-minute profanity-laced tirade against the officers.
Unfortunately for her, the whole incident was caught on the patrol car’s dash-cam.
This triggered an internal investigation which resulted in her sudden resignation.
Even worse, the dash-cam video went viral, quickly becoming one of the most memorable
displays of self-humiliation in American politics and shredding Commissioner Turner’s reputation
to bits.
And it wasn’t even her ticket!
2 - Anthony Spivey In North Carolina, when a former police chief
facing criminal charges didn’t show up for his court appearance, his attorney feared
the worst.
He informed the judge he was unable to locate his client, Anthony Spivey, who he feared
was thinking of ending it all.
The disgraced police chief had dozens of warrants for a variety of charges.
They caught Spivey stealing narcotics, cash, and firearms from the evidence room.
He also had a knack for lifting catalytic converters and embezzlement.
When his law enforcement days came to an abrupt end, he found work as a mechanic, where there
were plenty of converters to steal.
Things looked grim when North Carolina Wildlife officers found an abandoned boat belonging
to the missing chief floating on a river.
A .22 caliber rifle was found at the scene along with some notes handwritten by Spivey.
But despite a thorough search of the area with divers, K-9 teams, helicopters, and sonar
scanning, nobody could find Spivey’s body.
As they continued collecting evidence, authorities suspected that the scene was staged.
Their suspicions were confirmed a couple of days later when they received an anonymous
tip claiming that Spivey might be hiding at his aunt’s house in South Carolina.
Deputies left to investigate, and found Spivey hiding in a creek behind his aunt’s apartment
complex.
She claims she didn’t know he was there.
1 - Armstrong, Iowa A group of city officials in the city of Armstrong,
Iowa, a town with a population of 880 near the Minnesota border, did all kinds of things
to get an extra buck.
The town’s mayor—Greg Buume, police chief—Craig Merrill and city clerks—Tracie Lang and
Connie Thackery all joined forces to misappropriate city funds.
But as we all know, the hardest part of committing a crime is covering it up.
Their solution was to produce fraudulent public records, which is in itself a crime.
And to show they really meant business, they ended up using a TASER against a civilian
to extort more cash.
The four were arrested in February of 2021 on a variety of charges ranging from misdemeanors
to Class B felonies.
Click to watch one of these next videos!
And let us know in the comment section what you would rather have, Income tax based on
a percentage of your income, or a flat income tax?