Washington A tax lawyer involved in the largest tax fraud case ever; a county commissioner convicted of accepting nearly half a million dollars in bribes, including a stone-fired pizza oven; and the owner of a Medicare billing business in the Detroit area who masterminded a $26 million Medicare scam.
In the biggest single-day act of clemency in contemporary history, President Joe Biden commuted the federal sentences of all of them on Thursday.
In a broad and historic move, Biden commuted nearly 1,500 sentences and granted 39 pardons to inmates who had been released from prison more than a year ago under the CARES Act, a pandemic-era law designed to reduce overcrowding in federal prisons and convicted of non-violent crimes, many of which had to do with illegal drugs.
The offense will now be removed from their record, even though many of the people who were pardoned had already served their time. Sherranda Janell Harris, a Connecticut woman who was found guilty on federal narcotics charges at the age of 24, was pardoned, Biden said in a statement. She is 43 years old, has experience in the real estate and banking industries, is devoted to her church and faith, and has been hailed as an inspiration to young women in her community.
Biden granted clemency to the following individuals, along with the charges against them:
Jimmy Dimora, a former Cuyahoga County Commissioner in Ohio, was convicted of corruption and served almost 10 years in jail before Biden commuted his sentence on Thursday.In order to obtain approximately $450,000 in bribes, which included gambling trips to Las Vegas and Canada, prostitutes, and even a stone-fired pizza oven, prosecutors claimed that Dimora and former Cuyahoga County auditor Frank Russo, a longstanding political buddy, planned a comprehensive pay-to-play operation.
It was referred to at the time as one of the most extensive corruption cases in Ohio’s history. After spending almost 12 years, Dimora was released into house confinement in June 2023. Following a partial appellate court victory in 2022, his sentence was lowered.
According to prosecutors, Anthony Le, of Alabama, was 21 years old when he was sentenced to ten years in prison for drug and firearm charges in 2020. He had pleaded guilty to two counts of using, carrying, or possessing a firearm during or in connection with a drug trafficking felony and one count of possessing marijuana with intent to distribute.
Former President Barack Obama had already used his clemency power to commute Malcolm Hartzog’s life sentence to 30 years in jail in 2016, which at the time was a record. Previously, Hartzog had been charged with conspiracy to possess with intent to distribute a controlled substance and possession with intent to distribute a controlled substance more than ten years prior.
Paul Daugerdas, a former Illinois law partner, was found guilty of managing unlawful tax shelters that cost the government nearly $1.63 billion. Prosecutors claim that the plan resulted in almost $7 billion in false deductions. His legal practice consented to pay a penalty of $76 million. Prosecutors called Daugerdas the most prolific, pernicious and utterly unrepentant tax cheat in United States history, while a judge described the case as the biggest tax fraud prosecution ever,according toForbes. In 2014, he received a 15-year jail term, which Biden later commuted.
A medical billing company owner, Elaine Lovett, of Wayne County, Michigan, was convicted in 2017 for her role in a multimillion-dollar scheme to defraud Medicareusing false billing claims, in atakedownthat included twenty Detroit-area doctors and healthcare workers, according to federal prosecutors. The $26 million scam included attempts to evade the government’s investigation and charging Medicare for services that were never rendered. The U.S. District judge in the case sentenced Lovett to ten years in prison and mandated that he pay almost $9 million in reparations.
Shaquan Hemingway was sentenced to 70 months in March 2022 as part of an interstate trafficking sweep to halt the distribution of drugs like heroin, fentanyl, crack cocaine, and methamphetamines, as well as firearms. Thirty South Carolina drug traffickers, including one linked to the Jalisco New Generation Cartel of Jalisco, Mexico, were indicted in the multi-year sting, including Hemingway, who was 23 at the time, one of the youngest members of the group.
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