Pirate's Cove

Conspiracy. Money laundering. Theft. Graft. Intimidation. Tom Delay? Nope. Guess again.

Former Rep. Frank Ballance was sentenced Wednesday to four years in prison for conspiring to divert taxpayer money to his law firm and family through a charitable organization he helped start.

Ballance, 63, a longtime state legislator before being elected to Congress, has until Dec. 30 to turn himself in, U.S. District Court Judge Terrence Boyle ruled.

Ballance, a Democrat who represented the 1st Congressional District, reached a plea bargain last November in which he acknowledged conspiring to commit mail fraud and launder money. Under the terms of the deal, he could have received up to five years in prison, a $250,000 fine and three years’ supervised release.

Ooops!

Ballance forged the foundation director’s signature on state money requests and diverted foundation money from the Vance NAACP to pay a $15,500 legal bill in a criminal case and more than $69,000 in rent to his church, which housed the foundation’s office, according to the indictment.

In many cases, Duffy said, Ballance hid the financial trail by moving money from the Hyman Foundation to another non-profit or charitable group before it wound up benefiting family or supporters. Ballance also used his legislative position to intimidate state employees to look the other way when the Hyman Foundation failed for years to provide an accounting of how its funds were spent as required by the state, Duffy said.

"He ran that foundation like a private piggy bank," Duffy said. "No one in the Hyman Foundation even knew how much they were getting."

Ballance admitted dipping into foundation money to give his son $20,000 toward a Lincoln Navigator luxury sport utility vehicle; to pay his daughter $5,000 for computer services she didn’t perform; and to sharing $143,250 with his mother to pay for community programs.

Double OOOPS!