Ex-judge Jones’ ‘integral’ role in investment scheme laid out

Federal prosecutors filed court documents this week ripping into former Family Court Judge Steven Jones for betraying the public’s trust in a nearly $3 million investment scheme.

In a sentencing memorandum, Assistant U.S. Attorneys Steven Myhre and Daniel Schiess laid out the decade-long scheme in vivid detail, including Jones’ “integral” role while on the bench.

Prosecutors have agreed to argue for no more than 27 months in prison for Jones at his sentencing next week on one count of conspiracy to commit wire fraud. Defense lawyers want to chop months off the sentence, but federal probation officers have recommended more than five years behind bars for Jones.

U.S. District Judge Jennifer Dorsey will have the final say Wednesday. Prosecutors also are asking her to order Jones, who pleaded guilty in September, to join other defendants in paying $2.8 million in restitution.

The scheme, which began in 2002, revolved around the longtime judge’s former brother-in-law, Thomas Cecrle, who falsely portrayed himself as a “powerful, prominent man with special connections to the government” to lure people into investing in land and water rights deals with promises of “huge money returns,” according to the prosecutors.

“Jones joined the conspiracy around 2002, becoming its most prominent and most indispensable member,” Myhre and Schiess wrote. “Jones used and abused the public office to lull and mislead investors into a false sense of security, to ward off threats of legal action against Cecrle and to launder proceeds of the fraud.”

Cecrle and four other defendants indicted with Jones in October 2012 also pleaded guilty in the scheme. Cecrle is to be sentenced in March.

The prosecutors said Jones, who spent more than 20 years on the Family Court bench, “used the public trust inherent to his office to cloak Cecrle in the garb of legitimacy, all the while knowing that Cecrle was a fraud.”

In all, 50 victims were swindled out of $2.8 million during the drawn-out scheme, the prosecutors said.

One victim, Gene Isaacs, a retired pilot and hotel manager, went to his grave without receiving his promised return on hundreds of thousands of dollars he invested in the scheme. Isaacs had met with Jones in his chambers at Family Court and was assured by the judge that Cecrle was a respectable man, according to the prosecutors.

Myhre and Schiess attached a letter to their memorandum that Isaacs wrote in 2004, expressing displeasure with the judge’s conduct and saying he had “lost all respect” for the judicial system in Nevada.

Another victim, Jeanne Winkler, now a disbarred lawyer who pleaded guilty to federal fraud charges in an unrelated case, lost $390,000 in the scheme, primarily because of assurances she received from Jones, the prosecutors said.

“Jones knew that Winkler considered him a friend, that Winkler was in financial difficulty and — critically — that Cecrle was a fraud,” they wrote. “Yet, Jones introduced her to Cecrle and said nothing to her about his unsavory character. Instead, he reassured her that the investment was real and would pay off.”

Much of her money ended up in a joint bank account Jones and Cecrle set up in 2006 to launder proceeds from the scheme, according to the prosecutors. Between December 2006 and March 2008, there were roughly 1,000 transactions moving more than $260,000 through the account.

Jones also kept the scheme afloat in March 2006 when he used his office to get Cecrle released from the Clark County Detention Center on bad check charges tied to the scheme and then repaid the victim, the prosecutors said.

Months later, the prosecutors added, Jones directly received a cash payment from another victim of the scheme in the Family Court parking lot.

Myhre and Schiess said Jones “brought misery and sorrow” both to people he knew and to people he didn’t know.

The prosecutors said the collective losses of the victims were not staggering. But they added, “In many cases their losses amounted to death by a thousand cuts as the conspirators milked the victims time and again for more money, getting them to double down on their losses, all the while lulling them into a belief that the perpetrators had their own money at risk.”

In his sentencing memorandum, defense lawyer Gary Modafferi said Jones is “truly remorseful” for his actions.

“The offense is serious, but considering the fact that Steven Jones has been a good and honorable man who has served his community with distinction, his punishment should be mitigated significantly by the good he has done for others and the compassion he has displayed for years,” Modafferi said.

Modafferi also talked about the former judge’s love for the late prosecutor Lisa Willardson, who was drawn into unrelated disciplinary proceedings against Jones before the Nevada Commission on Judicial Discipline.

The commission issued a written decision on Dec. 24, 2013, concluding that Jones committed misconduct by maintaining a romantic relationship with Willardson while she appeared in cases before him in Family Court.

Less than two days after the decision, Jones found Willardson dead at her Henderson home in what authorities later said was an accidental drug overdose.

Jones was eventually suspended for three months without pay, and months later he resigned from the bench after he pleaded guilty in the federal case.

Despite the commission’s findings to the contrary, Modafferi maintained that the allegations were “shown to be untrue.”

He said the media-driven disciplinary proceedings proved two things.

“To begin with, the love between Lisa and the defendant was enduring and real,” he wrote. “These two very private people had their personal lives splayed before the media, and they handled the matter with grace and dignity.”

Contact Jeff German at jgerman@reviewjournal.com or 702-380-8135. Follow @JGermanRJ on Twitter.