February 20, 2011
Judge guilty of taking bribes from private prison, sending juveniles to for-profit lock-up
A former Juvenile Court judge was convicted Friday of racketeering in a case that accused him of sending young offenders to for-profit detention centers in exchange for millions of dollars in illicit payments from the builder and owner of the lockups.
Luzerne County Judge Mark Ciavarella, 61, left the bench in disgrace two years ago after prosecutors charged him with engineering one of the biggest courtroom frauds in U.S. history by using juvenile delinquents as pawns in a plot to get rich.
Federal prosecutors accused Ciavarella and a second judge, Michael Conahan, of taking more than $2 million in bribes from the builder of the PA Child Care and Western PA Child Care detention centers and extorting hundreds of thousands of dollars from the facilities' co-owner. Ciavarella insisted that the payments were legal and denied that he incarcerated youths for money...
LINK - AZCentral.com
