Closer look reveals life and times of NWI political power broker
Robert Cantrell stays confident throughout his public corruption trial
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Post-Tribune (IN)
June 2, 2008
Monday, the trial of Lake County power broker Robert Cantrell enters its second week in U.S. District Court, with the longtime political operative facing charges of honest services fraud and insurance fraud and tax evasion.The Post-Tribune offers a primer. Who is Robert J. Cantrell and why should I care?
Political beginnings
If you're over 60, you might know Bobby Cantrell only as the sweet-shooting star of the 1960 East Chicago Washington state championship basketball team. Otherwise, if you know Cantrell at all, it might be as a coach and administrator in the East Chicago schools.
A little help from friends
And if you travel in Lake County political circles, you know him as one of a handful of men to see if you need a government job, friends to help your campaign, and maybe a few dirty tricks to put you over the top. Cantrell's political alliances have shifted (quite deftly) for decades.
Now a close adviser to East Chicago Mayor George Pabey and County Clerk (and soon-to-be Coroner) Tom Philpot -- Cantrell had once been close with Pabey's hated rival Robert Pastrick and Philpot's nemesis, Sheriff Roy Dominguez.
His daughter, Julie, just won re-election as a Lake County judge, and his son, John, was once law partners with Hammond Mayor Tom McDermott Jr. He also had close ties to former North Township Trustee Greg Cvitkovich, who was convicted on corruption charges.
So what did he do?
Federal charges filed
After a three-year-long investigation, federal prosecutors have charged Cantrell with 11 counts.
He faces four counts of honest services fraud for allegedly accepting money from Addiction & Family Care (AFC), a company that did business with North Township while he was also on the township payroll; the payments were allegedly disguised as checks to his son, John, who was a law student in Indianapolis at the time.
Then there are three counts of insurance fraud for allegedly having his son, John, and daughter, Jennifer, put on AFC's group insurance plan though neither of them worked for the company.
Finally, there are three counts of tax fraud for allegedly keeping the money paid to John and not reporting it, as well as hundreds of thousands in off-the-books cash he allegedly split with AFC owner Nancy Fromm.
Link to counseling service
What did AFC do?
Nancy Fromm, an old hand in Hammond-area politics, said she approached Cantrell about getting work from local government in exchange for helping with Julie Cantrell's campaign for judge in 1996.
Once Julie was sworn in in 1997, she formed a forerunner to AFC and Cantrell's court became the first client, paying out nearly $600,000 in fees for providing counseling to defendants going through pre-trial diversion programs.
Bobby Cantrell, she said, was insistent that he never see a dime of the money AFC made from his daughter's court, but he took as much as half of every cent AFC raked in from deals he brokered with the East Chicago City Hall, the East Chicago Court, various Lake County Courts and, more problematically for Cantrell's case, North Township.
Financial ties that bind
Under state ethics laws, Cantrell was supposed to disclose his financial ties to AFC once he started working for the township in 2000.
Fromm said Cantrell used his ties to Cvitkovich to get AFC a contract in 1999, then negotiated renewals that ran through 2006 -- though she was fired after Cvitkovich was indicted and replaced in 2005.
What does Cantrell have to say about all this?
Defense attorney Kevin Milner, the lawyer who has defended most of the high-profile clients indicted since the U.S. Attorney's office began their Operation Restore Public Integrity probe in 2001, began by reminding jurors of that 1960 championship, as well as Cantrell's 1964 Big Ten title when a senior at University of Michigan, his long career in the East Chicago schools and even his decorated service in Desert Storm.
Filling the void
Testifying last week, John Cantrell said he was working in the Lake County courts in 1999 when he noticed that indigent drug defendants and petty criminals had scant resources for counseling services, and suggested his father use his political influence to find companies to fill the void -- and charge those companies fees as a sort-of lobbyist.
His proud father did just that, and sent a portion of those profits to his son during his three years of law school, then stopped the payments when John passed the bar exam.
Milner has attempted to describe it as a similar deal to when an attorney refers a case to a peer and collects a share of the resulting fees, though he does no work on the case.
"It was like I invented something, and he sold it," said John Cantrell, repeatedly, during his testimony.
The influence-peddling business was wholly legal -- though taxpayers may question whether it was worth $2,500 a month for a dozen Township employees to attend classes such as "How to Stop Procrastinating -- so long as Cantrell refused money from North Township contracts.
The insurance forms were forged by Fromm, who also improperly listed her daughter in-law and grandchildren on the AFC plan. Defense handwriting experts may also weigh in on handwritten notes on drafts of North Township's contracts with AFC attributed to Cantrell.
Fromm herself has no records that prove she gave cash to Cantrell, and the checks paid to John Cantrell all paid their federal withholding taxes.
Confidence reigns at trial
So how is it looking for Bobby?
Cantrell has seemed confident during the first four days of the trial, chatting amiably with his wife and daughters and the steady stream of politically connected observers who have dropped in on the trial.
He seemed especially nervous when John was on the stand, and his son's answers often seemed overly lawyer-like-- asked by prosecutors if he thought his "consulting" for AFC was work, he said, "I consider it employment"-- and perhaps too eager to help his father.
In the jury's hands
Fromm's testimony would seem especially damaging, but jurors will have to weigh the credibility of a woman who admitted on the stand she lied to investigators from the State Police and FBI, burned some records and hid others from federal investigators, and even altered her records to swindle Cantrell out of his share of AFC's profits.
And of course, her decision to cooperate with prosecutors came after she entered a plea deal to her own set of tax fraud and obstruction of justice charges. Defense attorneys in public corruption trials seldom win and often complain that "honest services fraud" charges give juries room to enter guilty verdicts that reflect their disgust with distasteful, but legal, political dealing. And the U.S. Attorney has run up a record of more than 40 consecutive convictions since the start of Operation Restore Public Integrity began. But no one expected EC Washington to win the big game back in '60, either.
So what happens next?
The trial is scheduled to continue another two weeks, with the prosecution expected to put a long list of Lake County politicians on the stand.
If convicted, Cantrell could face prison time and would have to pay restitution to the IRS and possibly others.
But, upon release, he would probably have no trouble finding a job in Lake County.
Julie Cantrell, who handily won re-election this spring, is well-liked even by some of the many local pols who despise her father, and would appear to face no repercussions.
Her younger brother, John, had an immunity agreement with prosecutors, but some who watched his testimony wonder if the state Bar Association would have to consider disciplinary action based on his AFC income and fraudulent insurance coverage.
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