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Saturday, May 31, 2008

Ind. Courts - "Intricate political web unravels at Cantrell trial"

Although the ILB has had plenty of mentions of various members of the Cantrell family in Lake County, it has avoided the current federal trial of Robert Cantrell until now.

This story from May 16th by Joe Carlson of the NWI Times gives basic background:

HAMMOND | The trial of political insider Robert Cantrell is scheduled to begin with jury selection May 27. Cantrell appeared in federal court in Hammond Friday for his final pretrial conference. The trial is expected to last three and a half weeks and to include more than 30 witnesses.

One of the government's star witnesses is Hammond attorney John Cantrell, Robert Cantrell's son. Defense attorney Kevin Milner, who represents Robert Cantrell, called his client's son, "an important witness."

Robert Cantrell, 65, of Schererville, was charged in April 2007 with 11 counts of defrauding the public of honest services while working for a public entity. He is also accused of defrauding an insurance company by having a township contractor insure two of his adult children and failing to report kickbacks he received from the contractor for work he steered to them.

The allegations center around Cantrell's dealings with township contractor Nancy Fromm, who owned Hammond-based Addiction and Family Care and has publicly admitted to paying Cantrell a "referral fee" for township business.

This story from May 17th by Andy Grimm of the Gary Post-Tribune provides more detail:
CROWN POINT-- After multiple continuances, Lake County political insider Robert Cantrell appears set to stand trial on fraud and tax evasion charges later this month.

At a hearing Friday, U.S. District Court Judge Rudy Lozano set the trial to start May 27 -- more than a year after Cantrell was charged.

Prosecutors said they may call more than two dozen witnesses to prove Cantrell defrauded taxpayers when he received a six-figure payout from a family friend who ran a counseling service that had accounts with numerous Lake County agencies, including Cantrell's daughter, Lake County Judge Julie Cantrell.

His daughter, who won re-election handily in the May 6 primary, is likely not the only political name to be introduced during a lengthy trial. Though he has never held elected office, Cantrell is as influential as any of the political players indicted in the U.S. Attorney's Restore Public Integrity corruption probe.

The former head of the East Chicago's Republican Party, Cantrell has varied and shifting ties to numerous Lake County political figures, including East Chicago Mayor George Pabey and former Lake County Democratic Party Chairman Stephen Stiglich.

Over the years, Cantrell has found his name on the payrolls of many government entities, including the North Township Trustee's office, which hired family friend Nancy Fromm's Addiction and Family Care (AFC) to provide counseling services.

Prosecutors allege Cantrell accepted more than $270,000 from 2000 to 2003 from AFC for helping the company win contracts with government entities. They also say Cantrell committed fraud by not disclosing his ties to AFC to a trustee, and that some $150,000 of his AFC income was not reported to the IRS.

Witness lists have not been made public record, but in court Friday, defense attorney Kevin Milner asked prosecutors to provide evidence related to possible testimony by Cantrell's son, John, a Lake County attorney.

Asked if he had been subpoenaed to testify against his father, John Cantrell said Friday, "I would love to comment, but I can't."

Now jump to today's stories. Joe Carlson reports:
HAMMOND | In a classic courtroom betrayal by a crony-turned-government-witness, Nancy Fromm on Friday described political fixer Robert Cantrell at the height of greed and paranoia.

In 2003, with the feds on their trail and literally stacks of cash in the backroom office, Fromm said she and Cantrell would grab for themselves pocketfuls of the money that had been collected from addicts attending counseling.

"We didn't talk in the office. He would just point to the drawer, and I would give him the cash," Fromm said. "He thought (investigators) had put bugs in, and I did, too."

But why should anyone believe anything Fromm says? Defense attorney Kevin Milner got Fromm to admit in cross-examination she was a liar and a thief who often blamed others for her own misfortune.

Fromm also has great motive to lie, because she's an admitted felon who is hoping to avoid jail time by cooperating with federal prosecutors in the case against Cantrell.

Fromm, 67, is owner of Addiction and Family Care Inc., a counseling firm that paid Cantrell hundreds of thousands of dollars for using his political connections to "get business" for the firm between 1999 and 2005.

Primarily, the business consisted of court-ordered drug and alcohol therapy and anger management classes for criminal offenders who were sent to AFC by judges who were friends of Cantrell, Fromm said.

The firm also provided educational classes and counseling to public employees in North Township, which also was Cantrell's employer at the time -- between 2000 and 2005.

Cantrell admits receiving some money from AFC. But one key question for the jury will be whether Cantrell received any money that related directly to the North Township work because that would be an illegal conflict of interests. He denies it.

Fromm and Cantrell were once very tight because so much of her revenue depended on him -- revenue she was secretly skimming for herself.

She even lied to investigators to protect Cantrell, although she also was lying to him at the same time about her true income and whether she had shredded incriminating records.

On Friday, she said she decided to come clean.

She said Cantrell got business for her firm using political influence with Sheriff Rogelio "Roy" Dominguez; North Township Trustee Greg Cvitkovich; County Commissioners Rudy Clay and Gerry Scheub; Lake Superior Court Judges Nicholas Schiralli, Sheila Moss and Jesse Villalpando; East Chicago Judge Eduardo Fontanez; Lake Station Judge Kris Kantar; Schererville Town Judge Deb Riga; and Kevin Pastrick, son of East Chicago Mayor Robert Pastrick.

Cantrell received nearly half of the money from clients referred to her through contracts approved by all of those officials, Fromm said.

Andy Grimm's report today:
Jurors in the trial of political kingmaker Robert Cantrell on Friday got a crash course on how to win friends and influence government contracting Friday, the fourth day of the corruption trial of the legendary political fixer.

In her second day on the witness stand, prosecution witness Nancy Fromm laid out the web of political connections that were the lifeblood of her counseling service, with Cantrell brokering dozens of contracts for her Addiction & Family Care.

Cantrell's handwritten notes were quickly added to contracts with his close friends, North Township Trustee's office, the East Chicago City Court and City Hall. He negotiated fees and smoothed over political rifts, then kept nearly half the company's fees and split another $300,000 in off-the-books cash with Fromm over six years.

"The truth is, I never really looked at these (contracts)," Fromm told Assistant U.S. Attorney Orest Szewciw. "I signed them and trusted Mr. Cantrell to do the negotiating."

At Cantrell's advice, Fromm said, she burned some records and hid others from the FBI, and lied to State Police investigators to protect their booming business when a contract with indicted Schererville Town Judge Deborah Riga came under scrutiny. Initially, she tried to cover up for Cantrell when his full-time employer, North Township Trustee Greg Cvitkovich, was brought up on federal charges.

Fromm would eventually fail her political godfather, first by not taking his advice and destroying other incriminating records, and then by agreeing to testify against him after federal prosecutors charged her with obstruction of justice and tax fraud.

Thanks to the many off-the-books transactions and missing records, Fromm's statements are prosecutors' best evidence in the case against Cantrell, who faces an 11-count indictment alleging he violated state ethics laws by not disclosing the thousands he earned from AFC while he was also on the township payroll.

Defense attorney Kevin Milner painted Fromm as willing to lie not just to investigators, but to her business partner. Fromm, who faces as long as 13 years in prison, had no records to show if Cantrell received cash, and she admitted altering business records so that she would have to share less of her take with Cantrell.

Fromm testified that at Cantrell's request, she paid his son, John, for a no-show consulting job and falsified insurance forms to put John and Cantrell's daughter, Jennifer, on AFC's group insurance plan.

But, Milner pointed out, Cantrell also insisted he protect his daughter Julie, a Lake County judge, by not accepting any share of the nearly $600,000 AFC collected for counseling services for defendants in her court.

"Didn't you think it was odd he went to such lengths to protect his daughter Julie and hung his son John out to dry?" Milner asked.

The trial, scheduled to take as long as three weeks, will resume Monday with Fromm still on the stand.

See also the NWI Times Bob Cantrell Trial Blog.

Posted by Marcia Oddi on May 31, 2008 11:45 AM
Posted to Ind Fed D.Ct. Decisions