06222008 - News Article - Cantrell's kids may face scrutiny - ROBERT CANTRELL

Cantrell's kids may face scrutiny 
NWI Times
June 22, 2008
http://www.nwitimes.com/news/opinion/columnists/mark-kiesling/cantrell-s-kids-may-face-scrutiny/article_03656170-a15f-5738-bdf6-4e6271a44c27.html
While political fixer Bob Cantrell dangles in the wind awaiting sentencing, pinning his hopes of reversing his federal corruption conviction on the thinnest of legal technicalities, other members of his family may be the next ones under the legal microscope.

Three of his children are lawyers, and of those one is a Lake County Superior Court judge.

And all were mentioned in not-so-flattering terms during Bob's trial, which ended June 6 with an 11-count conviction on public corruption charges.

John Cantrell is an attorney with a Hammond law office, and was formerly a partner of Hammond Mayor Thomas McDermott Jr. Jennifer Cantrell is an attorney who practices law out of the same building as her brother at 7135 Indianapolis Blvd.

One of the most costly things about being a private attorney is providing your own health insurance, and testimony was that Bob Cantrell helped his kids out with that by illegally getting them insurance from Addiction and Family Care Inc.

AFC is a counseling service for which Bob Cantrell worked as a paid consultant, getting a "finder fee" for providing clients. In return, the government proved, he also got health insurance for John and Jennifer even though they did no work for AFC.

"I am aware there was press reporting to that effect," said Don Lundberg, executive secretary of the Indiana Supreme Court Disciplinary Commission.

Lundberg would neither confirm nor deny an investigation, but said the commission could begin such an investigation even without a formal complaint based on news reports.

It also came out at trial that between 2000 and 2003, Lake County Superior Court Judge Julie Cantrell sent AFC more than $588,000 in referrals, almost half of the $1.3 million profit it made between 1999 and 2005.

Although Bob Cantrell never took money coming from his daughter's court, he used it as leverage to take up to 50 percent commissions on other referrals, the government said.

Meg Babcock, supervisor for the counsel of the Indiana Judicial Qualifications Commission, echoed Lundberg. She confirmed the details of the Cantrell trial have reached her office, and said her office can open its own investigation without formal complaint.

But like Lundberg, Babcock declined to say whether that has happened -- or whether the commission already was looking into Julie Cantrell's court, as the triangle of her court, her father and AFC had already been reported on.