Kids-for-Cash Developer, Robert K. Mericle, Reports to Prison

Kids-for-cash developer Robert K. Mericle may be a multimillionaire, but his spending power in the prison commissary will be the same as everyone else: a maximum $160 every two weeks.

Mr. Mericle on Monday morning reported to a prison camp on the grounds of Federal Correctional Institution at Schuylkill, interrupting his life of privilege to begin a one-year jail stint that subjects him to a strict list of rules.

 

If Mr. Mericle, Inmate No. 15135-067, intends to remain in control of his real estate empire, he’s allowed business associates as visitors but is forbidden from conducting business by telephone, according to a copy of the prison’s rules and regulations handbook.

 

A federal judge in April sentenced Mr. Mericle to one year in prison for concealing information from federal agents investigating two Luzerne County judges, Mark A. Ciavarella Jr. and Michael T. Conahan, in the infamous kids-for-cash scandal. The 51-year-old’s federal crime stems from his paying $2.1 million to the judges who were accused of conspiring to shutter a county-run juvenile detention center and sending scores of juveniles to two facilities built by Mr. Mericle’s construction firm.

 

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Kids-for-Cash Developer Reports to Prison