https://www.baltimoresun.com/politi...king~pugh-main~~1~yes-art~curated~curatedpage The newly unsealed federal indictment of former Baltimore Mayor Catherine Pugh pieces together some answers to lingering questions people have grappled with since the Democrat resigned from office in May amid questions over her business dealings. Federal prosecutors charged Pugh with 11 counts of fraud, tax evasion and conspiracy in what they allege was a corrupt scheme involving sales of her self-published children’s book series, “Healthy Holly.” The 34-page indictment — along with a plea deal from her longtime aide Gary Brown Jr. — shed new light on the way she allegedly sold and re-sold her books and pocketed the proceeds to pay for a bigger house and pad her campaign chest. Roslyn Wedington, the director of a nonprofit Pugh championed, also pleaded guilty in the investigation. Prosecutors say Pugh did it to unlawfully enrich herself, promote her political career and illegally fund her mayoral run. She is expected to turn herself in to U.S. Marshals and appear Thursday in U.S. District Court in downtown Baltimore. Her attorney, Steve Silverman, declined to comment on the charges Wednesday.
I'm unclear on what is unlawful. She (I'm no fan) wrote a children's book. She sold the book and made some money. Some of the book sales occurred while she was Mayor. Unless she somehow forced the City of Baltimore to purchase her book I guess I don't understand where a law has been broken. How is it illegal to profit from a book and use the proceeds for your Mayoral campaign? I mean, Bloomberg is spending his own money, how is this different?
I think the idea here is she borrowed from Peter to pay Paul... "Pugh and Brown would return to that city warehouse over the years to take the books out in order to use them to fulfill different sales, according to court documents. They would store the books in Pugh’s legislative offices, her mayoral office, the War Memorial building, a public storage locker and the cars of Pugh and her aides, the indictment states." My interpretation... She was double-dealing her books. School A buys a ton of books. They go to a warehouse at School A. She then sells a bunch to School B. She takes those books from School A warehouse and sends them to School B warehouse. And then there were straw donations to her campaign, from the ill-gotten proceeds from the double-dealing. And campaign donations are tax-deductible, so she avoided taxes on the proceeds from the sale of the books. Quite a scheme.
Wow! That was easy! https://www.zerohedge.com/political...guilty-fraud-tax-evasion-faces-decades-prison