09272010 - News Article - Felons made $4.6 million off Lake County contracts - ROBERT CANTRELL

Felons made $4.6 million off Lake County contracts
NWI Times
Sep 27, 2010
nwitimes.com/news/local/lake/felons-made-million-off-lake-county-contracts/article_1e89676e-aa7f-5864-8879-c2fff8e1814b.html
CROWN POINT | Lake County's penchant for public corruption has not been confined to elected officials during the first decade of the millennium.

A Times investigation of county spending shows at least three county contractors -- who collectively earned more than $4.6 million from the county government between 2000 and 2009 -- went off the legal rails, too.

Peter Benjamin never was charged with breaking the law in his elected careers as county assessor and auditor. But he did run afoul of the law as a consultant hired by the Lake County Council in the late 1990s to help sue the state in a dispute regarding property tax distributions to local government.

Benjamin pleaded guilty in 2003 to paying a bribe -- cash and a suite of dining room furniture -- to then-County Council President Troy Montgomery in exchange for Montgomery's role in steering more than $69,000 in public funds to Benjamin's law firm.

In another case, Nancy Fromm, a former Hammond precinct committeewoman, started a business in the early part of the decade called Addiction and Family Services and won a number of lucrative consulting contracts from local government to provide a broad range of counseling services.

Lake County paid her at least $299,500 in consulting fees for providing substance abuse advice to inmates of the sheriff's work-release center. However, county officials dropped Fromm as a vendor in 2007 after she pleaded guilty to federal obstruction of justice and tax evasion charges and became a government witness against Robert Cantrell, a political power broker and her former business partner.

Fromm later admitted as part of corruption probe by the U.S. attorney's office that she won exclusive contracts from courts in Hammond, East Chicago, Schererville, Hobart, Gary, Lake Station, Whiting, Lowell and Crown Point thanks to Cantrell's political connections. Federal authorities never alleged Fromm's county government work was illegal. She was sentenced to probation.

Fromm said last year she was "smitten by the elixir of cash."

Cantrell, convicted of taking kickbacks from another local government body, and for insurance and tax fraud, is serving a federal prison term.

In another matter, Lake County officials paid Roosevelt Powell at least $4.2 million as their private tax collector for pursuing delinquent debt from 2000 until 2006 -- when the county severed his contract following a federal fraud indictment alleging he used his job illegally.

A federal jury later convicted Powell of illegally erasing back taxes on an abandoned Gary supermarket as part of a deal to enrich himself, former County Councilman Will Smith Jr. and former Gary attorney Willie Harris. All three were imprisoned.