Soon-to-be ex-mayor, Max
U.S. DISTRICT COURT, BENTON—Electronic documents at the federal court system in Benton show something everybody’s been waiting for: It appears soon-to-be former Bridgeport mayor Max Schauf is ready to enter a guilty plea in his federal case.
The documents through PACER show simply that Schauf has “changed his plea.” Of course, since he entered a plea of “not guilty” last November after his federal indictment, that means that he changed his plea on April 22, 2013, to “guilty.”
The only thing we don’t know is which of the four charges he’s facing he’s plead guilty TO.
Here’s a screenshot of the record sheet in the November 2012 case, with the most recent actions taken:
here ’tis
Schauf was indicted on November 6 with three counts of Mail Fraud (for mailing payments to various credit card or billing entities he owed money to but using city funds to pay them) and one count of Obstruction of Justice, all federal felonies. The Obstruction charge came from allegedly lying to FBI agents when he was under investigation from 2009-2012 (one of those things we were telling people was happening, but which they were denying vociferously). The least of these charges is the Obstruction; we’ve seen many federal felons get probation for that count, although federal prison is a possibility.
Our sources tell us that Max has, up to this point, approached his charges with plenty of bravado, telling people he was “innocent” and it all was going to “just go away.” However, by pleading not guilty back in November, that assured that the feds would either keep coming after him with their impressive volume of evidence…or possibly file more charges against him, as his alleged dipping into city funds apparently knew no limits: He was even funding family member business ventures with city money (such as those ‘owned’ by his brother Charlie and son Mark; he’d employ them through the city with city money, which looked viable and above-board on the surface, but probably wasn’t the wisest use of taxpayer dollars.) So evidently, the feds found enough to convince Schauf to cut his losses.
The building in question
We’ll see in a week. In the meantime, Schauf is hurrying to get set up in a building in Russellville (shown above) established as a bar…ostensibly before he has a felony conviction on his record next week, as a convicted felon can’t hold a liquor license in Illinois. Be watching the site next week for the developments in Benton; with any good fortune we might even get a shot of Schauf going to/coming from the federal courthouse; and of course, we’ll have the full coverage in the print version and online at the e-Edition, available between May 13-15, 2013!