Guilty. It’s official. Mark Ciavarella, Jr. (inmate number 15008-067) will receive a 28-year prison sentence for the Kids-For-Cash Scandal that he was originally charged with, back in August of 2011. Ciavarella will have to pay $1.2 million in restitution for the crime.
“On February 18, 2011, following a trial, a federal jury convicted Ciavarella on 12 of the 39 counts he faced including racketeering, a crime in which prosecutors said the former judge used children as pawns to enrich himself. In convicting Ciavarella of racketeering, the jury agreed with prosecutors that he and another corrupt judge had taken an illegal payment of nearly $1 million from a juvenile detention center’s builder and then hidden the money.”
The story started with two judges from Pennsylvania and a corrupt kickback scheme they were involved in. Mark Ciavarella is a former Judge of the Luzerne County Court of Common Pleas in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania. Michael Conahan is a former judge from Luzerne County Pennsylvania.
Both judges accepted money from the co-owner and builder of two private, for-profit juvenile facilities, in return for contracting with the facilities and imposing harsh sentences on juveniles brought before their courts in order to ensure that the detention centers would be utilized.
Both corrupt judges were found guilty of the Kids-For-Cash scandal by a jury in Scranton, Pennsylvania. Thousands of innocent juveniles had been wrongfully tried and convicted.
