01162018 - News Article - Buncich's girlfriend goes to his sentencing and lands in the hot seat

Buncich's girlfriend goes to his sentencing and lands in the hot seat

NWI Times

January 16, 2018

http://www.nwitimes.com/news/local/crime-and-courts/buncich-s-girlfriend-goes-to-his-sentencing-and-lands-in/article_f6edd086-5a54-57f4-9091-e4f863d083ef.html

HAMMOND — Former Lake County Sheriff John Buncich's significant other admitted Tuesday she used a restricted police data system to dredge up sensitive background information on his accusers.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Philip Benson confronted Deborah Back with evidence of the unauthorized data collecting when he called her to the witness stand, as a surprise witness, during Buncich's sentencing for public corruption in U.S. District Court Judge James Moody's courtroom.

"I know it was wrong," Back said.

Sheriff Oscar Martinez Jr. said Tuesday afternoon he is banning her from working in the Sheriff's Department, where she has been director of nursing for the lockup's medical unit the last six years.

Benson accused Back of twice using her access to the Lake County Sheriff Department's Spillman's data system in February to investigate the government's lead investigators against Buncich — Benson and Scott Jurgensen and Jurgensen's family.

Benson led the U.S. attorney's office prosecution team against Buncich at the August trial and Tuesday's sentencing. Jurgensen, a retired Merrillville police officer and towing firm owner, was an undercover informant for the FBI investigation gathering evidence of bribery against Buncich.

Back had access to the system because of her position at the county jail, a job that paid between $158,000 and $230,000 a year — more than Buncich, who made $146,000 last year. She said she routinely used it to determine the medical status of jail inmates.

"Do you think you should continue to have access to this system after you've abused it?" Benson asked her. She said she didn't understand, and no one warned her, what she did was improper at the time. Benson asked, "It that because you were the significant other of the sheriff?"

Back said she and the sheriff have been dating for four years — two years after she first began working at the jail — and they have been living together recently. Benson said federal authorities arrested Buncich at her Crown Point home in November 2016 when he was first indicted on bribery charges.

She said Dr. William Forgey, owner of Correctional Health Indiana Inc., hired her to be his nursing administrator in 2012. Forgey is a close friend of and has been a personal physician to former Sheriff Buncich.

Back's future in the jail is in jeopardy. Martinez, who took over the Sheriff's Department in September after Buncich's removal from office, said his investigators have been cooperating with federal authorities who discovered Back's unauthorized use of the data system.

He said he had agreed to wait until the U.S. attorney's office made the violation public before he would act. He said he has immediately denied Back access to the Spillman system and to work in the jail until his department completes an investigation into whether she violated any laws or department rules.