Posted on 09/17/2010 3:43:41 AM PDT by Born Conservative
Former Luzerne County commissioner Greg Skrepenak reported to a federal prison in West Virginia on Thursday to begin serving a two-year sentence.
A Bureau of Prisons spokesman said Skrepenak is an inmate at the Federal Correctional Institution at Beckley.
Skrepenak, 40, of Jenkins Township, was charged with accepting a $5,000 kickback from an area real estate developer in return for supporting the developer’s acceptance into a program that delays payment of real estate taxes to allow the money to pay for infrastructure.
The former National Football League lineman and standout at the University of Michigan pleaded guilty to a felony charge of corrupt receipt of reward for official action concerning a program receiving federal funds and was sentenced on Aug. 6.
Skrepenak, a Democrat, served half of his second, four-year term as commissioner before resigning in December, a day before the charge was filed and in the midst of a public corruption probe that ensnared 30 people, including county judges, elected and appointed officials, school district officials and businessmen.
He received the stiffest sentence to date among those who pleaded guilty to charges related to the ongoing probe.
The medium-security facility at Beckley houses male inmates and is located in the southern part of the state near the Virginia border. A minimum security satellite camp is located next to the prison. According to the BOP website, FCI Beckley is approximately 51 miles southeast of Charleston.
It was expected that Skrepenak would be able to serve his sentence closer to home to be near his family.
Last month, Senior U.S. District Judge Richard Conaboy approved a request filed by Skrepenak’s attorney, Peter Moses, to recommend the minimum-security satellite camp of the U.S. Penitentiary at Canaan in Wayne County. The judge directed the U.S. Probation Office to contact the BOP and make the placement recommendation.
A call to Moses was not returned.
Still pending is a request for a six-month sentence reduction. Moses argued the court miscalculated how much Skrepenak’s sentence should be reduced because of his cooperation with federal authorities.
Conaboy noted that cooperation when he sentenced Skrepenak and ordered him to serve the lower end of a 24- to 30-month sentence.
Activity in the case continued this week. On Tuesday, Moses was allowed to file a document that was sealed by the court and kept from public view. The judge on Wednesday denied a second request to file sealed documents, saying it was redundant.
The iron law of unintended consequences strikes again.
And we have Congressmen and Senators that do this every day and walk free and clear?
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