Feds say Soderquist tried to abolish court to hide theft
Chicago Tribune
October 28, 2015 - 3:44 PM
October 28, 2015 - 3:44 PM
Former Lake Station Mayor Keith Soderquist tried to dissolve the city court in order to hide that his stepdaughter stole from the city government, federal attorneys argue in a motion.
The motion, filed in the U.S. District Court in Hammond, lays out a six-day timeline of the mayor's reaction to questions from the state about more than $15,000 in missing money.
"The Soderquists were desperate to cover up (Miranda) Brakley's crime," the motion says.
Brakley is accused of stealing money from a federally funded program and lying on her bankruptcy filings. Soderquist and his wife, Deborah Soderquist, are charged with acting as accessories after the fact and money structuring. Their trial is scheduled to start Nov. 9.
According to the government's motion, auditors with the Indiana State Board of Accounts discovered in 2012 that more than $16,000 in bond money was missing from the city's accounts. Police officers properly logged in the bonds as they were paid, but they weren't entered into the city court's computer system. Auditors pegged Brakley, who then worked as a deputy court clerk, and left a message for Soderquist on Dec. 4, 2012, to schedule an interview with her.
Two days later, he helped introduce an ordinance at a City Council meeting to dissolve the city court entirely, although the ordinance failed.
Federal attorneys argue in the motion that the mayor claimed this move was initiated by council members but that he was the one behind it in order to try to cover up the theft by taking control of the court's finances to move money around.
"While this plan had significant issues, it certainly couldn't fare worse than the coverup plan to which the defendants ultimately resorted," the motion says
That plan actually started a day before the council meeting, according to the motion, when the mayor called a relative asking to borrow $15,000. Federal attorneys argue the mayor waited to actually collect the money until the council voted on the ordinance to abolish the court. When the vote failed, he and his wife left the next day to drive to the relative's home in Kentucky, arriving at about 3 or 4 a.m., the motion says.
"They did not take a leisurely trip to Kentucky," the motion says.
At the request of the Soderquists, the motion says, the relative wrote them three checks totalling $15,000, each backdated to a different date in the past month. Federal law requires banks to notify the government for any banking activity of more than $10,000. Breaking up one deposit into smaller ones that do not go over $10,000 is considered money structuring.
Deborah Soderquist then cashed one of the checks that same day at a bank in Kentucky, the second check a day later at a bank in Merrillville and the third check on Dec. 10 at a bank in Munster.
That's the same day Brakley gave the SBOA a little more than $15,000 in cash, saying she had only just discovered the money sitting in her vehicle. She claimed was actually going to deposit the bond money when she was fired in June 2012 and then accidentally put the money in her vehicle, where it sat unnoticed for months, documents said.
Federal attorneys are asking that U.S. District Judge James Moody allow them to present evidence of these actions to a jury as proof that the Soderquists knowingly tried to help Brakley hide her theft. They say that trying to abolish the city court is not necessarily evidence of a crime but that the fact it was done so close in relation to the call from the SBOA elevates it.
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