Cell phone records connected to gambling trips in Soderquist trial
Post Tribune
September 08, 2015 - 7:29 PM
Lake Station Mayor Keith Soderquist's trial continued Tuesday as federal attorneys connected various pieces of evidence to tie withdrawals from his campaign fund and the city's food pantry to dozens of gambling trips.
FBI Special Agent Nathan Holbrook and Assistant U.S. Attorney Philip Benson went through 56 cell phone calls made from November 2011 through November 2012 that tracked the general location of the mayor and his wife, Deborah Soderquist. Some of the calls were made in the same area and time of ATM withdrawals from either Soderquist's campaign account or the Lake Station Food Pantry account.
For instance, one call made on Nov. 21, 2011, was placed in Lake Station five minutes before a withdrawal was made in the city, according to the records.
Records showed these withdrawals were all made within 24 hours of a trip to Four Winds Casino in New Buffalo, Mich., and roughly half were made within two hours of a trip.
The rest of the calls were all made from New Buffalo, and around the same time that casino cards opened in the Soderquists' names showed activity. Records from a large number of the casino trips also showed that the Soderquists used their player cards to enter the Copper Lounge, which requires photo identification.
The Soderquists are accused of using money from his campaign fund and the food pantry to pay for more than 50 gambling trips, mostly to Four Winds.
Earlier in the day, Steve Martinez, a criminal investigator for the IRS, testified under cross-examination by defense attorney Scott King that the IRS gave the Soderquists credit for all of the receipts they turned over for campaign expenses that had not been reported on campaign finance disclosure forms without trying to determine whether they were legitimate campaign expenses. Even factoring out money from these receipts, he said, there was still $16,908 withdrawn from the account that had not been accounted for.
"We found a large amount of money coming out of the bank account," he said.
The Soderquists have said they paid themselves money from the campaign fund as reimbursement for previous loans.
Martinez testified that the couple did record making some loans to the mayor's campaign fund and then paying the loans back over time. However, these reported loans did not account for any of the $16,908 taken out in withdrawals, he said, and the Soderquists never reported any other loans being made to the campaign fund.
The government also introduced evidence to dispute claims by King and his fellow defense attorney, Lakeisha Murdaugh, that the Soderquists had to help the food pantry financially after bad floods hit the city in September 2008. Records from a bank account in the name of Lake Station Flood Victims that was opened just two days after the floods hit the city show that $2,236 was deposited into the account in the first six weeks after it was created.
No money was withdrawn from the account until March 2010, 18 months later, when all of the money was transferred to the Lake Station Food Pantry account.
The trial, which started last week, is expected to continue Wednesday.
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