Posted on 07/27/2005 6:10:36 PM PDT by SandRat
State Rep. Tom Prezelski Jr. is the suspect in a Tucson Police Department felony fraud investigation and had a financial crisis after taking office that included an arrest warrant for a bad check, an Arizona Daily Star investigation shows.
A friend told police in May that Prezelski, 35, had stolen a blank check from her, made it out for more than $10,000 and forged her signature in June 2003, four months after he took office. That's around the same time the Democrat's Tucson home was being foreclosed upon.
Four months later, he was accused of issuing a bad check, a misdemeanor theft.
That case has been dismissed and no charges have been issued in the fraud case, although it's still an open investigation.
Prezelski also still owes nearly $3,000 to Tucson Municipal Court for two traffic tickets and four parking tickets and numerous late fees, although he said on Tuesday that he wasn't aware of the fines.
Prezelski attributed the problems partly to a pay cut he took when the Pima County Board of Supervisors appointed him to the House of Representatives in February 2003 after his predecessor resigned to fill a Senate vacancy.
He now has his finances straightened out, he said, and he doesn't believe the problems have affected his job. He also doesn't think they will affect his 2006 re-election campaign.
"I think I have a pretty good record otherwise," he said Tuesday, and asked that voters judge him by his House record.
"I think I'm coping and I'm a lot more responsible than I was even two years ago."
But a political opponent had bigger concerns about the revelations.
Judi White, chairwoman of the Pima County Republican Party, had not heard of the incidents. But she questioned if it is appropriate for someone at the center of a fraud investigation to be in a position to influence how tax dollars are spent.
"You have to be honest with people," she said. "If this stuff is true, I know that's not the kind of person I want representing me."
Faced foreclosure
Prezelski was behind on house payments and facing foreclosure on his Downtown-area home in June 2003, shortly after taking office, according to documents from the Pima County Recorder's Office.
He asked for a loan from a teacher, Judy Singleton, a friend and sometimes girlfriend. She had lent him $4,000 - her entire savings - when he bought the house in February 2002 and he hadn't made an effort to pay her back, she said in an interview. She told him she didn't have the money and he didn't bring it up again, she said.
Prezelski "panicked" and took a blank check from Singleton's home, he later told a police detective, according to a Tucson police report. Prezelski's name was deleted from the report, but authorities confirmed it was he.
He made out the check for $10,181, forged Singleton's signature and tried to deposit it, according to the police report. The bank called to verify the check and Singleton asked that payment be stopped, she said.
Prezelski asked Singleton not to tell police, she said, and he said they wouldn't believe her without proof. It wasn't until May that Singleton found the returned check and called police because she thought Prezelski needed to be held accountable, she said. She also mailed letters to top Democrats earlier this month, she said.
When police called Prezelski, he told the detective he and Singleton had "an understanding" that "the issue would not be pursued any further," according to the police report.
Prezelski told the Star he hasn't heard from police since May and isn't comfortable saying more than what he already told detectives.
"This is really a personal issue between Judy and I about a bad relationship that ended badly," he said. Prezelski said he doesn't owe Singleton money despite her saying he has never repaid the $4,000.
Singleton said reporting the incident wasn't a vendetta.
"It's for the good of the Democratic Party that I'm letting people know who they're dealing with," she said. "Not because I'm mad at him."
The case was never assigned to a detective because TPD's fraud unit only has time to investigate cases in which a suspect is in custody, said Sgt. John Patla, head of the unit. The unit assigns around a tenth of its cases, he said.
Once a fraud crime is discovered, police have seven years to prove the suspect intended to commit the crime, Patla said, and fraud cases that are not assigned usually are picked up again if the criminal is caught.
Forgery is a class 4 felony that carries a sentence of one to nearly four years in prison.
House sold at auction
Prezelski's house was sold at auction in September 2003 after foreclosure, according to documents from the Pima County Recorder's Office. His parents had co-signed on the home loan.
Then in October 2003 - eight months after he took office and four months after attempting to cash Singleton's check - Prezelski was charged with issuing a bad check, a misdemeanor theft that can bring up to six months in county jail upon conviction, according to Pima County Justice Court records. Records immediately available didn't show the dollar amount or the victim.
The victim sent him a notice, the Pima County Attorney's Office sent him two notices and a warrant for his arrest was issued in March 2004.
A month later, Prezelski paid in full, the warrant was quashed and charges were dismissed.
"That was bad accounting on my part," Prezelski said Tuesday. The business didn't have a phone number to reach him and he got the letters during a Legislative session, he said.
He said he hasn't written any bad checks since.
Prezelski said the salary cut he took when he took office caused his financial crisis. He faced a pay cut of around $10,000 when he left his job as a transportation planner for the Tohono O'odham Nation, where he worked for about four years. He is paid $24,000 a year - around $11.50 an hour - plus some travel benefits as a District 29 representative.
He has cut expenses by switching to a cheaper apartment in the Downtown area and living with a friend while working in Phoenix, he said.
Unopposed in 2004 race
Prezelski ran unopposed in 2004 in District 29, which embraces a large swath of the predominantly Democratic South Side. It includes South Tucson and much of Tucson south of 22nd Street, with South 12th Avenue as its western boundary and South Houghton Road on the east.
According to the county Recorder's Office, the district has 30,047 Democrats, 18,544 Independents and 15,005 Republicans.
State Rep. Linda Lopez, the Tucson Democrat who represents District 29 with Prezelski, said she was not familiar with his problems.
But, as the assistant minority leader who helps oversee all House Democrats, Lopez said "there is always a concern" about the fallout for other Democrats. How it impacts Prezelski's career, she said, ultimately will be up to him.
Paul Eckerstrom, chairman of the Pima County Democratic Party, said he also was not aware of Prezelski's legal difficulties and declined to speculate on the possible political implications.
It appears the demonrat politicians are the ones sending a trojan donkey-jackass into the demonrat party, and it looks like the demonrat party is not investigating it, but rather looking the other way as this trojan donkey-jackass
is getting bigger and bigger until it explodes within the party headquarters itself.
This guy and Clinton would make great cellmates....
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