John Ford, other lawmakers charged with taking bribes in FBI's Tennessee Waltz
Agents set up a fake company to catch influence peddlers
By Marc Perrusquia
Contact
May 27, 2005
The witnesses were actually undercover federal agents, according to indictments unsealed Thursday morning.
The controversial Memphis Democrat was one of seven charged with accepting more than $90,000 to push legislation for E-Cycle Management Inc., a firm with an Internet Web site that claimed offices in Memphis, Atlanta and overseas but that actually was the creation of federal authorities.
Company president "Joe Carson" met with lawmakers to push his agenda, passed out fake business cards, made campaign contributions and even hosted a reception with live music for lawmakers at the Sheraton Nashville Hotel.
Charged along with Ford were two other prominent Memphis Democrats, Sen. Kathryn Bowers and former senator Roscoe Dixon, a longtime lawmaker who resigned this year for a new job as a top aide to Shelby County Mayor AC Wharton.
Dixon resigned from that post Thursday at Wharton's urging.
Bowers this month was elected to Dixon's seat in a special election after serving years in the House.
Also indicted are two East Tennessee legislators, Sen. Ward Crutchfield, D-Chattanooga, and Rep. Chris Newton, R-Cleveland, and two others described as bagmen.
Legislators are paid a base salary of $16,500 a year, and rules allow them to remain in office pending their trials. They are, however, required to give up committee chairmanships when facing criminal charges.
The charges, returned late Wednesday by a federal grand jury in Memphis, were sealed until all defendants were in custody. Ford was arrested by three FBI agents as he stepped off an elevator at his Nashville hotel.
Ford was immediately transported back to Memphis and made no comment as he was led into a courtroom hours later in handcuffs and shackles.
He faces a 10 a.m. bond hearing today when a judge is expected to consider whether Ford -- a 31-year Senate veteran whose influence commanded a $356,000 consulting income in 2003 -- is now indigent and in need of a court-appointed attorney.
Prosecutors said they would attempt to have Ford held without bond.
Believing the hearing was to happen Thursday, prosecutors readied a courtroom to show videotapes.
"He's upset, obviously. He's confused and dismayed,'' said Ford's lawyer, Martin A. Grusin.
The FBI sting, code-named Tennessee Waltz, is the state's biggest public corruption probe since the Rocky Top bingo scandal, and U.S. Atty. Terry Harris left the door open when asked if others may be charged.
"Our citizens should be able to expect (their) government is not for sale,'' Harris said during a press conference broadcast live across the state.
Operation Rocky Top of the late 1980s netted 75 convictions, triggered indictments of four public officials and lobbyists and resulted in the suicides of veteran Rep. Ted Ray Miller (D-Knoxville) and Secretary of State Gentry Crowell.
Harris said the Tennessee Waltz sting came in response to longstanding reports of corruption in the General Assembly. Investigators worked covertly over the past two years and into this spring, even as a public ethics tempest swirled over Ford's financial ties to state contractors.
The fake company approached lawmakers and passed out money in exchange for influence and favorable legislation, indictments say.
The greatest share -- $55,000 in cash -- allegedly went to Ford, who has been in and out of trouble since his first election to the Senate in 1974.
Ford is the focus of a separate grand jury probe exploring lucrative consulting fees received in recent years from state contractors.
"You are talking to the guy that makes the deals,'' Ford told an undercover agent who first approached him in April 2004, according to the indictment.
Ford, 63, placed in handcuffs Thursday morning across from Legislative Plaza in Nashville and transported by federal agents to Memphis, is charged with one count of extortion, one count of stealing from a federally funded program and three counts of witness intimidation.
Ford allegedly threatened to shoot agents on three occasions between February and April.
On March 11, the indictment said, Ford threatened "an FBI agent acting in an undercover capacity,'' saying "if he caught someone trying to set him up he would shoot that person, kill them, so that there would be no witnesses.''
A factor expected to be considered today when an as-yet unscheduled judge considers releasing Ford is his court record that includes firearms charges.
A jury acquitted Ford in 1991 of shooting at a truck driver, and he served a probation term and won diversion after waving a shotgun at utility workers during a confrontation in 1997.
Thursday's arrests, which included apprehensions of Newton, Crutchfield and Bowers, triggered shock waves from one end of Tennessee to the other.
Records show Tennessee Waltz started as a closely held secret and remained so for months.
That secret began to unfold Wednesday when, in a rare move, authorities cleared Judge Jon McCalla's courtroom to receive sealed indictments from a Memphis federal grand jury.
According to those indictments, unsealed Thursday morning, the FBI formed a fake company, E-Cycle Management Inc., in 2003. Ostensibly, E-Cycle was in the business of obtaining and disposing of outdated electronic equipment outside the United States.
Over the next months agents passed out payments in efforts to secure legislation that would make it easier for E-Cycle to obtain equipment from government agencies.
E-Cycle reportedly got a bite as early as June 2003 from defendant Barry Myers, a former Ford campaign worker and ex-employee with the Juvenile Court Clerk's office.
According to an indictment charging him with six counts of extortion and Hobbs Act violations, Myers told undercover agents "he had influence over, collected money for, and was in essence a 'bag man' for certain members of the Tennessee General Assembly.''
Myers also said those lawmakers "could be influenced in sponsoring and voting for certain legislation that would benefit E-Cycle,'' the indictment said.
As part of that conspiracy, the indictment said, Myers introduced E-Cycle representatives to Bowers, then a state representative from Memphis, "who would co-sponsor, and support legislation beneficial to E-Cycle, in exchange for illegal payments of sums of money.''
Together, Myers and Bowers allegedly took $11,500 in bribes.
As E-Cycle pressed Bowers to co-sponsor legislation, she told agents she "would not accept money directly from the E-Cycle representative, but that the money should go through'' Myers, the indictments alleged.
Released on her own recognizance, Bowers said, "Sometimes people may be indicted for something but that doesn't mean they're guilty."
For Myers, this is the second public corruption probe in three years in which he's been named as a bag man, although he wasn't charged in the other case.
Emerging from a grand jury room in 2002, then-County Commission aide Calvin Williams told a reporter that he and Myers passed $1,500 in cash in purported hush money to a woman who had accused a county employee of assaulting her.
Charged in that case were Williams and then-Juvenile Court clerk Shep Wilbun. In a puzzling move, state prosecutors this month dropped the charges as a trial started for Williams, Wilbun and a third defendant.
The E-Cycle agents also approached Dixon, who took $9,500 in bribes with Myers in 2004, according to an indictment.
Dixon, also released Thursday, said after his hearing, "I don't have anything to hide.''
He called the arrests a "dog and pony show,'' saying "the public has to understand that there is politics in this.'' He said his lawyers urged him not to discuss the case in-depth.
Indictments charge that Charles Love, a Hamilton County school board member, took $9,500 in bribes along with Newton, who introduced a bill this session, also sponsored by Ford in the Senate.
The bill, which never passed, would have allowed the state commissioner of general services in consultation with the governor and others to transfer computer and electronic equipment to "local education agencies, without financial consideration.''
It also would have allowed fees to be charged to the state to dispose of equipment, calling for disposals to be made by "a qualified electronic recycling company.''
