Ex-Judge Gets Probation, $250 Fine For Bank Fraud
Posted on Friday, 13 of November , 2009 at 8:47 pm
TAMPA, FLA—He faced up to 30 years in federal prison followed by five years of supervised release.
He was fined $250 and ordered to complete a year of probation.
That’s because he had been “humiliated” and disbarred for five years after being caught, according to the sentencing judge.
Former appeals court judge Thomas E. Stringer Sr., who copped a plea in August to federal bank fraud charges for lying on a loan application he had submitted in order to obtain a $350,000 mortgage for a house in Hawaii he bought with a stripper, got a sweetheart deal when he was sentenced Friday by U.S. District Court Judge Elizabath A. Kovachevich.
Fedreral prosecutors had recommended no prison time.
Kovachevich told Stringer, 65, that he was to be commended, apparently for taking the plea deal after prosecutors and the paper trail caught him red handed when the stripper blew the whistle on the former judge.
In what amounts to a mockery of the court system, Kovachevich, a former judge in the Sixth Judicial Circuit of Pinellas and Pasco Counties, said she was sentencing Stringer to time served.
Stringer was only in custody from the time he was arrested until he could be processed and released.
Stringer also has to complete 150 hours of community service and he won’t profit from his crime. He has to forfeit the $222,362 profit he made from selling the Hawaiian property.
Stringer had stated on the loan application that none of the money being used for the down payment was borrowed when in fact he had obtained the cash from the stripper, Christy Yamanaka.
Stringer, who formerly sat on the Second District Court of Appeals, was formally charged earlier this year under a criminal complaint filed in the U.S. District Court, Middle District of Florida at Tampa. He was charged with executing or attempting to execute a scheme to obtain money, assets or property from a financial institution by means of false or fraudulent pretenses or representations.
Despite his felony conviction, it is expected Stringer will receive his full pension but he will lose his right to vote.
Stringer resigned in February, a month after formal disciplinary proceedings were filed against him in Florida Supreme Court by the Florida Judicial Qualifications Commission regarding his financial dealings with exotic dancer Yamanaka, 47.
In March, following Stringer’s resignation and the stipulation that he would never again serve as a judge, the JQC dismissed its charges.
In March, 2008, Yamanaka had alleged that not only had Stringer had a 15-year “friendship” with her that started in 1995 and included sexual relations, but that he had helped her hide assets from creditors. She claimed that Stringer took her money and owes her hundreds of thousands of dollars. He initially denied it.
Stringer was one of the three members of the 2nd District Court of Appeals that ratified the dehydration death of brain injured Terri Schindler Schiavo, handing down a decision on June 3, 2003, supporting the order of judicial homicide issued by Pinellas County Probate Court Judge George Greer at the behest of one of America’s most infamous husbands and adulterers, Michael Schiavo.
She was put to death by dehydration when her feeding tube was removed on March 18, 2005. She died 13 days later.
Kovachevich also had a role in the Schiavo case. Michael Schiavo had filed a falsified guardianship application on May 21, 1990, notarized by his attorney, Daniel Grieco and filed in the Pinellas County Court system, falsely claiming he had a college degree from Bucks Community College in Pennsylvania.
Less than a month later, Grieco represented Michael Schiavo against the Prudential Insurance Company in a filing in U.S. District Court in Tampa before Judge Kovachevich in an action involving employee benefits.
Stringer was Stetson’s first black law school graduate and Hillsborough County’s first black circuit judge. Kovachevich is also a Stetson alumni and was the first female judge in Hillsborough’s neighboring judicial circuit.
Kovachevich had been nominated to a seat on a federal district court in 1976 by President Gerald Ford but the U.S. Senate never acted on Ford’s nomination before his presidency ended and his successor, President Jimmy Carter, declined to renominate her.
President Ronald Reagan nominated her for the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Florida in January 1982. She was confirmed in March 1982.
http://www.northcountrygazette.org/2009/07/23/stringer_fraud/
http://www.northcountrygazette.org/2009/02/11/stringer_resigns/
http://www.northcountrygazette.org/2008/03/16/judicial-hypocrisyschiavo-stringer-and-sex/ 11-13-09
Category: Courts, Crime, Florida, Schiavo
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