Hearne on probation in Utah fraud case

Wednesday, Oct. 23, 1996 | 11:59 a.m.

Former Las Vegan Kem Hearne has been sentenced to three years probation on fraud charges stemming from missing funds for an ailing Salt Lake City boy who later died of liver failure.

Hearne, who once tried to hold a 1994 Las Vegas fund-raiser by claiming that President Clinton would attend, also was ordered to do 500 hours of community service and pay $3,666 in restitution to the American Liver Foundation by District Judge William Thorne at Monday's sentencing in Salt Lake City.

Hearne, whose exploits in Las Vegas included charging school kids to participate in a physical education program in which he disappeared without awarding prizes that were promised, faced five years in prison.

As part of a plea bargain for Hearne pleading guilty to one felony count of breach of a fiduciary duty and one count of misdemeanor theft by deception, the attorney general's office dropped another felony and misdemanor count.

Utah investigators began looking at Hearne after he could not account for $2,000 he received from Utah Jazz basketball star Karl Malone and more than $1,000 from others during a 1990 fund-raiser he held to get a new liver for Corey Mueller, a Utah boy who later died from a rare blood disorder.

Hearne, who claims to be a world-class marathon wheelchair racer, held a similar fund-raiser to get a racing chair for a Las Vegas boy. The boy's family said Hearne disappeared without purchasing the machine. They did not press charges.

Hearn moved back to Utah in 1994, about the time investigators in that state began putting together the Mueller case against him. Fraud charges were filed last year.

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