09012016 - News Article - Former Lake Station mayor admits to wiretapping thousands of City Hall employee calls

Former Lake Station mayor admits to wiretapping thousands of City Hall employee calls
September 01, 2016 - 5:00 AM
Becky Jacobs
Post-Tribune
http://www.chicagotribune.com/suburbs/post-tribune/news/ct-ptb-soderquist-wire-tap-st-0902-20160831-story.html

Former Lake Station Mayor Keith Soderquist has admitted to recording and listening to phone calls of City Hall employees over several years starting in 2011, according to federal court records filed Wednesday.

The development could factor into his sentencing later this month for misusing public funds and helping hide stolen money.

Soderquist pleaded guilty earlier this year to helping his stepdaughter, Miranda Brakely — who was sentenced last month to six months of home detention — hide more than $16,000 in court bond money she stole from the city by helping her get a $15,000 loan from a third party to cover up the theft.

And last September, a jury found Soderquist and his wife, Deborah Soderquist, guilty of using money from his campaign fund and Lake Station's food pantry on dozens of gambling trips to Michigan.

He was set to be sentenced Sept. 28 in U.S. District Court in Hammond in these two cases when a presentencing agreement filed Wednesday in federal court revealed the City Hall wiretapping.

According to the agreement, the government learned about the wiretapping after a Lake Station City employee discovered a recording system device in March. The FBI investigated and found Soderquist had authorized an electronic recording system be installed on City Hall phones, including the police and fire departments and excluding the mayor's office, during the construction of Lake Station City Hall in late 2011, according to court records.

With the system, Soderquist could listen to the recordings at any time on a computer, and he could even listen to a call as it was happening, records state.

Between Oct. 12, 2011, and Aug. 13 of last year, Soderquist recorded about 425,000 calls to and from City Hall phones, and since Dec. 1, 2014, he had listened to about 30 of the recordings, records state. Fourteen of the calls he accessed were made or received "by potential government witnesses working at City Hall" and at least one call was made from a phone in the private chambers of a Lake Station City Court judge, records state.

However, the investigation wasn't able to determine how many calls he listened to before December 2014 because of a computer system crash that deleted the records before the investigation, and records didn't identify how many calls Soderquist may have listened to as they were happening.

Some of this happened while Soderquist was released on bond in his federal cases in April 2014, records state.

Soderquist admitted to the wiretapping in the agreement, and in exchange, the government won't file new charges. Instead, the wiretapping will factor into Soderquist's two previous cases he's already waiting to be sentenced in. He potentially faces 42 months in prison, according to the agreement.

The government also has recommended that Soderquist pay $3,520 in restitution to the city of Lake Station and $22,571 to the Internal Revenue Service. But ultimately, his sentencing is up to a federal judge at the end of September.