Indiana casino executive charged in illegal campaign scheme

[Judi Lynn]

Source: Associated Press

TOM DAVIES
, Associated Press
Sep. 29, 2020
Updated: Sep. 29, 2020 11:03 a.m.



FILE - In this Aug. 28, 2019, file photo, John Keeler, Vice President and General Counsel for Spectacle Entertainment, addresses the members of the Indiana Gaming Commission in Indianapolis. Keeler has been indicted Tuesday, Sept. 29, 2020, on federal charges of illegally funneling campaign contributions to a former state lawmaker's unsuccessful congressional campaign. (Doug McSchooler/Chicago Tribune via AP, File)Doug McSchooler/AP

INDIANAPOLIS (AP) — A top executive of an Indiana casino company that is building a new $400 million casino in Gary has been indicted on federal charges of illegally funneling campaign contributions to a former state lawmaker’s unsuccessful congressional campaign, officials announced Tuesday.

The federal indictment charges Spectacle Entertainment vice president John Keeler and former Republican Sen. Brent Waltz, of Greenwood, with taking part in a scheme to direct more than $25,000 in illegal corporate contributions through straw donors to Waltz’s 2016 campaign.

Keeler was then an executive of Centaur Gaming, which sold Indiana’s two horse track casinos in Anderson and Shelbyville to Las Vegas-based Caesars Entertainment Corp. in 2018 for $1.7 billion. He was part of a group that formed Spectacle to buy the Gary casino operation along Lake Michigan and lobbied state legislators last year to allow its move to a more lucrative on-land location.

Messages seeking comment were left for Keeler and at a phone number previously listed for Waltz, who was a state lawmaker for 12 years before giving up his seat for the congressional run.

Read more: https://www.chron.com/news/article/Indiana-casino-executive-charged-in-illegal-15605838.php

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Sen. Brent Waltz

[chowder66]

1. The IRS and district attorneys in each state should start looking at all of these types of conmen.

[Midnight Writer]

2. Republican America-Open For Business!

[Judi Lynn]

3. Former Republican State Senator Indicted for Conspiracy to Violate Campaign Finance Laws, Straw Dono

Former Republican State Senator Indicted for Conspiracy to Violate Campaign Finance Laws, Straw Donor Scheme
MATT NAHAM
Sep 29th, 2020, 1:06 pm

A 47-year-old Indiana businessman who was a Republican state senator from 2004 to 2016 has been charged, along with a second defendant, in a conspiracy to violate campaign finance laws. Darryl “Brent” Waltz and John S. Keeler, the 71-year-old former vice president and general counsel of a gaming entity called New Centaur LLC, were charged in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Indiana on Tuesday.

Attorney General Bill Barr’s former chief of staff Brian C. Rabbitt, now Assistant Attorney General in the Justice Department’s Criminal Division, announced that Waltz and Keeler for charged for alleged violations of campaign finance laws, false statements, and for falsifications of Federal Election Campaign records.

. . .

The straw donor scheme described above reminds of the allegations recently leveled against Postmaster General Louis DeJoy.

Prosecutors allege that more than a dozen straw donors, many of them Waltz’s relatives, were recruited in order to make prohibited contributions to Waltz’s 2016 campaign.

More:
https://lawandcrime.com/high-profile/former-republican-state-senator-indicted-for-conspiracy-to-violate-campaign-finance-laws-straw-donor-scheme/