WASHINGTON (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 13th December, 2018) Former US congressional aide Thomas Dodd was sentenced to a year-and-a-half in prison for helping to fraudulently raise some $1.2 million from charities to illegally fund election campaigns, the Justice Department said in a press release.
"A former congressional staffer [Dodd] was sentenced today to 18 months in prison and ordered to pay $800,000 in restitution, to be followed by three years of supervised release, for participating in a multi-year scheme to defraud charitable donors of hundreds of thousands of Dollars and secretly to funnel the proceeds to pay for personal expenses and to illegally finance campaigns for Federal office," the release said on Wednesday.
Dodd joined other co-defendants, including former Congressman Stephen Stockman, in soliciting more than $1.2 million from charities and wealthy donors based on false pretenses, the release said.
Dodd pleaded guilty last March to one count of conspiracy to commit mail and wire fraud and one count of conspiracy to make conduit contributions and false statements, the release said. A conduit contribution is a political donation made through a third party to conceal the identity of the real donor.
