07102008 - News Article - Former S'ville judge to be sentenced today - Riga eligible for leniency for her role in Cantrell case - ROBERT CANTRELL

Former S'ville judge to be sentenced today
Riga eligible for leniency for her role in Cantrell case
NWI Times
Jul 10, 2008
nwitimes.com/news/local/former-s-ville-judge-to-be-sentenced-today/article_5f882c6e-6a2b-571e-ab81-a85652f02a14.html
HAMMOND | Exactly 25 months after Deborah Riga pleaded guilty to using her judicial powers to enrich herself, the former town judge is set to learn her prison sentence today.

Riga was the second person ever elected town judge of Schererville, but her second term in office was stopped short after she was indicted on multiple counts of mail fraud.

Riga is eligible for a more lenient prison sentence because she cooperated extensively in the criminal investigation of East Chicago political fixer Robert Cantrell.

Cantrell was convicted last month of 11 counts of fraud. In court filings Monday, prosecutors said Riga's testimony was essential during the trial. In particular, Riga testified that Cantrell spoke openly about receiving cash kickbacks in exchange for arranging government contracts.

At trial, Cantrell defense attorney Kevin Milner made much of the fact that prosecutors did not have a direct financial trail linking Cantrell to the alleged payments.

That was because Cantrell took so many of the payments in cash, prosecutors and witnesses said.

Riga hired Cantrell's favored firm, Addiction and Family Care, in exchange for cash payments to counsel defendants in the Schererville court. She said Cantrell talked openly about getting cash kickbacks from the deal.

Riga pleaded guilty in June 2006 to a similar but unrelated scheme in which she used her judicial powers to force youthful defendants to attend driving and counseling classes at businesses she controlled.

She eventually made about $30,000 in profits through the scheme. The $12,000 left in her accounts when she was indicted is likely to be forfeited to the government, Assistant U.S. Attorney Orest Szewciw said in 2006.

Szewciw wrote Monday that Riga began cooperating in the Cantrell investigation just a month after pleading guilty.