Overdue justice catches up

THE WHEELS of justice grind slow but exceeding fine, as some folks around here may have discovered at long last:

● His (dis) Honor Michael Maggio has run out of delaying tactics, for U.S. District Judge Brian Miller—a judge worthy of the title—ordered the happily former judge to turn himself in to federal marshals, and off to jail with him. He is now to begin serving a 10-year prison term for bribery. No longer judge, it’s past time Mr. Maggio traded in his nice coat-and-tie for prison attire. For he had pleaded guilty to his crime, before trying to un-plead. The man’s criminality seems to have been exceeded only by his chutzpah, a legal term of art for sheer nerve.

● Gladys Waits, aka Gladys King, no longer has to wait for justice. It caught up with her in U.S. District Judge James Moody Jr.’s courtroom the other day where she was sentenced to 108 months in federal prison for taking bribes to help others submit phony claims they’d provided meals for low-income children. At least she wasn’t just put on probation, as her lawyer had recommended. All in all, she and her co-conspirators defrauded We the People out of more than $9.6 million from a state-operated program of the United States Department of Agriculture. Money that should have been used to feed hungry kids. She ought to be ashamed of herself—if only these types were capable of shame.

● Shirley Sooy, who used to live in her native Arkansas, has changed her place of residence to the Federal Medical Center, Carswell in Fort Worth, Texas, after pleading guilty to wire fraud and money-laundering as part of an updated Ponzi scheme she operated through her various businesses. She and her cozy co-conspirators funneled some $42 million through their operation, the TransVantage Group, but the bills they were paying were largely their own, and they ran up a lot, what with their taste for luxuries, among them a $135,000 Maserati and a 48-foot yacht. These high-class, low-behaving thieves were definitely not pikers when it came to spending other people’s money, usually on themselves. She’s got a 50 month sentence ahead—and in the federal system there are no paroles. Which should be assuring news to a public she bilked for all too long.