Former N.C. Congressman Gets Four Years
Oct 12 7:10 PM US/Eastern
Breitbart/Associated Press
Excerpt:
By EMERY P. DALESIO
Associated Press Writer
ELIZABETH CITY, N.C.
Former Rep. Frank Ballance was sentenced Wednesday to four years in federal prison for conspiring to divert taxpayer money to his law firm and family through a charitable organization he helped start.
Ballance, a 63-year-old Democrat who was a state senator before being elected to Congress in 2002, also agreed to repay $61,917 and to forfeit $203,000 in a bank escrow account in the name of the John A. Hyman Memorial Foundation.
The forfeited funds will be returned to North Carolina taxpayers, federal prosecutor Dennis Duffy said.
"I want to apologize to my family and all the people I represent for what, I call them mistakes, but they were violations of the law," Ballance said before he was sentenced.
Ballance, who represented the 1st Congressional District in northeastern North Carolina, reached a plea bargain last November in which he acknowledged conspiring to commit mail fraud and launder money.
Ballance had resigned from Congress in June 2004, citing ill health, without completing his first term.
According to a 51-page indictment, Ballance channeled $2.3 million in state money from 1994 to 2003 to the nonprofit foundation he operated to help poor people fight drug and alcohol abuse.
"He ran that foundation like a private piggy bank," Duffy said. "No one in the Hyman Foundation even knew how much they were getting." Read Full Story |
