Transcript of Kimmel sentencing released

19-Jan-09 – A transcript of the November 20 sentencing of Gary Kimmel has been made public by the U.S. Attorney’s Office.

The Marina City resident was sentenced to 37 months in prison for money laundering in connection with a nationwide prostitution ring. Kimmel will report to a federal prison – possibly a medium-security institution in Oxford, Wisconsin – on March 2.

The transcript is an exhibit attached to a response filed on January 9 by Assistant U.S. Attorney Julie Ruder. She was responding to a “position paper” by Kimmel’s attorneys, Joseph Lopez and Paul Zido, arguing for a lower restitution amount.

The hearing started at 11:30 a.m. and lasted two and a half hours. Ruder, Lopez, and Zido spoke before the judge in the case, Honorable Blanche M. Manning. They speak for 80 transcript pages, in fact, before Kimmel speaks for the first time.

“I got into this trying to help somebody,” he says, recounting for the judge how he got involved with the prostitution ring. He said he initially did not know that his tenants were involved in criminal activity. In 2004, he says he began to suspect when a young woman came to his home to pay rent for Jody Spears, then a tenant of Kimmel’s and now a convicted pimp. The woman looked to Kimmel and his wife, Mona Lisa, like she had been beaten.

“That was the first time that I really suspected this had something to do with [criminal enterprise].”

Kimmel has maintained he was involved in the scheme to enhance his credit rating. He would take out car loans and others, he thought, would make the payments. He tells Manning he was $250,000 in debt because he had signed loan agreements for luxury vehicles.

“When I realized what was really going on,” he says, “I should have just pulled the plug on it and said, ‘It’s over, guys. I’m going to take the hit on these cars.’”

“I made a terrible mistake, no question about that,” he tells Manning. “I’m so sorry for that.”

When Spears and others involved in the ring fell behind on car payments, Kimmel says “he lost money in this whole proposition.”

“I’m destitute,” he tells the judge. “I’ve got nothing at this point.”

Kimmel concludes, “I’m terribly sorry for what I did. I’ve ruined my life. I’ve ruined my children’s lives. I don’t know how I’m going to put them through school and an education. I don’t know how I’m going to support my family any longer. I don’t know what I’m going to do, but I’m not going to give up. I’m going to keep trying.”

In handing down sentence, Manning notes that Kimmel is a decorated war veteran and highly educated, but that his education doesn’t go in his favor “because it seems to me that a person who’s as highly educated as you should have had better common sense than to get involved in this type of activity.”

Manning (left) also notes that it is clear to her that in government recordings of telephone conversations, Kimmel knew that the men he was dealing with were involved in the prostitution business and “that they were abusing…the women who were involved in it with them.”

After serving his prison sentence, Kimmel will have two years of supervised release, but the judge waived any fine.

Arguments are then made concerning forfeiture. Lopez asks the court to recommend Kimmel serve his sentence at the Federal Correctional Institution in Oxford, Wisconsin, a medium security prison for male offenders. It is where former Governor George Ryan is serving a six-and-a-half year sentence.

Kimmel does not speak again until the very end of the proceedings, when he says, “Thank you, Your Honor.”

 Transcript of November 20 sentencing (last 16 pages, including all of Kimmel remarks)

 Related story: Kimmel’s first day of prison pushed back to March