From NBC News:
Former Baltimore Mayor Catherine Pugh was indicted on multiple charges Wednesday, including wire fraud and tax evasion, in connection with the sales of her self-published children’s books.
The U.S. Attorney’s Office in Maryland announced the charges in an 11-count federal indictment alleging that Pugh used her company, Healthy Holly, to publish books and then sell them “directly to nonprofit organizations and foundations, many of whom did business or attempted to do business with Maryland state government and Baltimore City.”
Pugh resigned in early May after authorities began probing whether she arranged bulk sales of “Healthy Holly” books to disguise hundreds of thousands of dollars in kickbacks.
Federal, state and local probes have been looking into questionable financial arrangements for her hard-to-find books. The books were meant to be provided to schools and day care centers, but it’s unclear where tens of thousands of copies ended up.
The Democrat was elected mayor in 2016 after having served in the state Legislature since 2005. As a state senator, she once sat on a committee that funded the University of Maryland Medical System, one of the state’s largest private employers.
The hospital network — on whose board she sat starting in 2001 and until the scandal over the illustrated paperbacks erupted in March — was Pugh’s biggest book customer.
The system paid Pugh $500,000 for 100,000 copies. There was no contract behind the deal and the medical system described some of the purchases as “grants” in federal filings. She returned her most recent $100,000 payment and described the deal as a “regrettable mistake” during a news conference days before she retreated from public view.
Link to the rest at NBC News
Boggles the mind that an administrator would not see the absolute conflict of interest in supplying her own book to fill a perceived need.
There used to be guidelines in common sense.