Madison County prosecutor seeks to keep taxpayers from paying for Bathon’s crimes
By Mike Fitzgerald, Belleville News-Democrat | |
McClatchy-Tribune Information Services |
Now
Gibbons is asking a
Gibbons had already succeeded in getting the county dismissed as a defendant from one of the class action lawsuits before all three were combined. Now he wants to do the same thing for the newly merged lawsuit.
"And so we're going to look to enforce that order and that finding uniformly," Gibbons said, "so that the taxpayers aren't on the hook for any more legal fees, and certainly aren't on the hook for any damages here."
So far, those co-conspirators consist of a group of three tax buyers who've pleaded guilty to helping Bathon rig the tax auctions, forcing property owners to pay millions of dollars in excessive interest fees on late tax bills during the years of the scam -- 2005 to 2009.
"I believe that the tax buyers and
What's more, "The federal convictions obviously help this lawsuit on the issue of liability," Weber said.
Weber noted that the county has
Makanda businessman
One way or another, "I believe the victims will be compensated through our lawsuit," Weber said.
Bathon, 59, in January began serving a 30-month sentence at a federal prison camp in
Three of Bathon's biggest campaign donors -- tax buyers
McLean, whose tax-buying business is based in East St. Louis, and Vassen, of Belleville, were sentenced last month to prison terms of 18 months and two years, respectively.
A key issue in the federal prosecutions of Bathon and the three tax buyers has centered on the question of how to set up a restitution system for their victims.
Federal prosecutors have argued for more than a year that setting up such a system would be impractical. Why? Because of the complexity and scope of the problem of trying to determine the financial losses suffered by thousands of individual
U.S. District Judge
But both
Gibbons, the county state's attorney, said he believed such a restitution system could be set up, too.
"I've seen the argument made there is no practical way to do it, and then I've seen at least one of the plaintiff attorneys claim it would be very simple," he said. "I tend to think that neither of those two things could be true. It could neither be absolutely simple (nor) absolutely complicated."
But if the court were to force the lawsuit defendants to hire someone to calculate the damages owed to the scam's victims, "I think at some point there's a way to do it," Gibbons said. "If we can put a man on the moon ...You can do anything with enough drive and will."
Weber, the plaintiff attorney, agreed that the level of damages owed to victims could be calculated accurately on a reasonable basis
"And I believe that a just result would be for us to show some rational measure of damages, and it's got to be up to the defendants to show they're paying too much," Weber said.
No matter what, he said, "I will be happy to let a jury sort out the damages."
Contact reporter
___
(c)2014 the Belleville News-Democrat (Belleville, Ill.)
Visit the Belleville News-Democrat (Belleville, Ill.) at www.bnd.com
Distributed by MCT Information Services
Wordcount: | 854 |
Chalk-based painting: Give that old piece of furniture new life
Family of missing Oklahoma teenager desperate for clues
Advisor News
Annuity News
Health/Employee Benefits News
Life Insurance News