"Home confinement for sixth person in Navy scheme" by Michelle R. Smith | Associated Press, December 07, 2013
PROVIDENCE — The sixth and final person convicted in a 15-year kickback scheme that cost the Navy $18 million was sentenced Friday to nine months of home confinement after the judge said she refrained from putting her behind bars only because her guilty plea saved taxpayers the expense of a trial.
Do we get a say in this because I want her locked up. Time to lock up all the looters like you do everyone else. Of course, we know that is not how AmeriKan ju$tice works.
Mary O’Rourke, 50, of Warwick was also ordered by US District Judge Mary Lisi to pay back $478,000 to the Navy and to serve 1,000 hours of community service, equivalent to working full time for six months.
The sentencing brings an end to the criminal case surrounding Georgia-based contractor Advanced Solutions for Tomorrow and O’Rourke’s boyfriend, Ralph M. Mariano, a former civilian employee of the Navy and the mastermind of the kickback scheme.
A civil whistleblower lawsuit, first filed in Georgia, is still pending in federal court in Rhode Island.
O’Rourke was a lawyer and executive at Advanced Solutions for Tomorrow. Mariano would approve money to be paid to the contractor from the Navy, then the contractor would funnel money back to him and others through subcontractors.
What is the point of commenting on what is and has been $tandard operating procedure for as long as I can remember.
Rampant corruption in the military-indu$trial complex? Yer kidding!?
O’Rourke pleaded guilty to theft of government property for submitting invoices for work she never did to one of those subcontractors.
Her lawyer told the judge that O’Rourke’s conduct was an aberration and that she was a lifelong hard worker who did valuable work for the defense industry. O’Rourke apologized in court to her family.
It $ure was valuable to $ome.
Lisi said that as a lawyer, O’Rourke should have known better and that she deserved prison.
But didn't get it? Lisi was light with the sentence? People who plead guilty get prison all the time; it is how the $y$tem works.
Sentencing guidelines called for her to spend at least 18 months in prison, but prosecutors recommended five years of probation because she and Mariano both agreed to plead guilty. O’Rourke has been disbarred.
“The sheer amount of money involved cries out for a jail sentence,” Lisi said.
Lisi added nine months of home confinement to the government’s recommendation, to be served during the first part of her probation, “so you can feel the sting, a little bit, of what your codefendants are feeling as they report to prison.”
Mariano began serving a 10-year prison term last week after pleading guilty, although he is appealing his conviction.
If I come across any further items regarding this story during the current wave of Globe throwaways I will update, or I may not. I may just say f*** it because I find myself doing that more and more with what I find in the Globe. Sorry.
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