The corruption of Thomas J. Monaghan

With the help of Newspapers.com, which the Wikipedia Library grants users access to in exchange for their contributions to Wikipedia, I have begun to piece together the mayoralty of Thomas J. Monaghan, who served three terms (one nonconsecutive term followed by two consecutive terms) as Democratic mayor of Lancaster, Pennsylvania, the first from 1958 to 1962 and the second and third from 1966 to 1974. 

Monaghan was a corrupt politician. In 1973 Thomas A. Graham, founder and chairman of a civil engineering firm called Meridian Engineering, Inc., accused him of coercing him into paying him a series of installments totalling over $20,000 between 1969 and 1972. The payments were kickbacks; the city of Lancaster had paid Meridian over $614,000 for three engineering projects, including a sewer silo.

In 1975 Monaghan was indicted for one count of extortion (the incident I have just described) and two counts of tax evasion. It turned out that he had understated his income on federal income tax forms twice, in 1971 and in 1972. Because politicians get let off easy more than anyone would like to think, the extortion charge and one of the tax evasion charges were dropped. For the remaining charge, he received only a $5,000 fine and three years of probation. Had he been convicted of the other two charges, he would have faced 26 years in prison (he died in 1992, so he would have died behind bars). Talk about justice!