State senator aided fraud

[FishForLunch]

I am sure you guys are wondering what party this crook belongs to, don't bother with Google. If the MSM does not mention a party in the headline or by the first paragraph then it will always be a democrat.

Case and point this news snippet from AP


http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories...MPLATE=DEFAULT

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Court testimony: State senator aided fraud

BATON ROUGE, La. (AP) -- State Sen. Derrick Shepherd helped a felon launder nearly $141,000 in bogus construction bond fees last year, keeping nearly half the money, an FBI agent said.

Shepherd denied the allegations that agent Peter Smith made during a detention hearing Monday for bond broker Gwendolyn Joseph Moyo, who has not been charged but allegedly sold the fake bonds.

According to an account of the hearing by The Times-Picayune of New Orleans, Smith testified that Shepherd, an attorney who often handles personal injury cases, wrote "settlement proceeds" on memo lines of checks to Moyo, but there is no evidence that he did any legal work for her.

Smith said a "vague invoice" given to a federal grand jury was basically illegible.

"To me, it looks like he was trying to disguise it, to make it look like this was for a personal-injury case," Smith said of the notations in the checks' memo lines.

Smith said the FBI believed money laundering was involved.

Shepherd, who finished a strong third in a 2006 run for Congress, was reelected to his state Senate seat on Saturday with 61 percent of the vote.

"At no time have I ever testified before a grand jury, nor at any time have I ever committed any crime whatsoever - state, local or federal - in my life," Shepherd told The Times-Picayune in a telephone interview. He refused additional comment.

Shepherd did not immediately return a telephone call to The Associated Press on Tuesday.

Smith said FBI agents have questioned Shepherd, and he has been "invited to the grand jury."

Moyo, 52, of New Orleans, was arrested at the federal courthouse Thursday after she arrived at the grand jury room without any of the documents she was ordered to bring.

Fanning suggested that prosecutors want to jail her partly as pressure to provide evidence against Shepherd. She refused to "wear a wire" when the FBI first interviewed her in July, he said.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Mike Magner told U.S. Magistrate Judge Alma Chasez he expects a grand jury to indict Moyo this week.

She has felony convictions in Arizona and in Washington, D.C. The Arizona conviction was in 1989 for issuing false contractor bonds. She was convicted in 1991 in Washington of using a fake Social Security number.

Contractor bonds are required on most large projects to protect the owner. They are essentially insurance policies that are cashed in if the contractor does not perform.

After her first conviction, Mayo was banned by law from insurance business. But last year, Great Southern Dredging Inc. of Mandeville paid her $321,555 for a contractor bond on a project at Pelican Park in St. Tammany Parish.

The state Department of Insurance got a court order in November to make Moyo and companies with which she is affiliated stop selling commercial insurance. The order, issued in November, also let the department seize her records and two bank accounts the department knew about.

Smith said Shepherd was among several lawyers Moyo asked about her problem, which left her unable to cash checks made out to her firm. Moyo told investigators that Shepherd suggested she sign uncashed checks over to him for deposit in an account he controlled, according to Smith.

Smith said Moyo signed five checks totaling $140,686 - two bearing notes that they were for bond fees - to Shepherd's account. Shepherd kept about $65,000 of Moyo's money and returned the remaining amount, the agent testified.

[dude1394]

Another case of the media we wish we had versus the one we have.