Tuesday, March 18, 2008 | 2 a.m.
Sun Archives
- Defending the hard-to-defend Lynette Boggs (2-13-2008)
- Face to Face: Boggs Case (2-12-2008)
- Boggs’ spending will get a second look (1-31-2008)
- Boggs: I’ve paid $15,940; Lawyer: I’ve not been paid (1-30-2008)
State agents have issued grand jury subpoenas in a continuing investigation into whether former Clark County Commissioner Lynette Boggs misappropriated campaign funds.
Agents with the Nevada Investigation Division served separate subpoenas Friday at Community Bank of Nevada seeking records from Boggs’ personal and campaign accounts dating back to January 2007.
“We want to see if she used campaign funds for her personal use,” said Lt. Matt Alberto, the Investigation Division’s regional commander in Southern Nevada.
State investigators already have one criminal case pending against Boggs.
Spurred by the Culinary Union and the police union’s videotapes that appeared to show Boggs living at a home outside her district, an Investigation Division probe last year led to Boggs’ facing four felonies stemming from her unsuccessful 2006 bid for reelection. She was accused of lying about living in her district and of circumventing campaign laws to pay her children’s nanny.
District Judge Donald Mosley tossed out the two charges involving the nanny last month, but Boggs is scheduled to stand trial on the two remaining charges March 31.
Agents renewed their interest in Boggs after the Sun reported in January that Boggs had filed a campaign finance report stating she’d paid her former criminal defense attorney, William Terry, $10,000 in May.
Alberto said his agents subpoenaed Boggs’ bank records after Terry refused to talk to them about the reported payment. Terry, who no longer represents Boggs, also has turned down the Sun’s requests for interviews since January.
Boggs’ current attorney, Gabriel Grasso, declined to comment Monday.
In January, however, Grasso said he thought the $10,000 payment to Terry and another $5,900 payment in December 2006 were related to Terry’s defense of Boggs in an unrelated ethics case.
Alberto said Monday public officials can use campaign funds to pay lawyers to defend them in ethics cases, and state agents are unlikely to pursue the case against Boggs if that is what happened.
Boggs’ ethics case, however, was dismissed in January 2006, almost a year before the $5,900 payment and about 16 months before the $10,000 payment.
The latter payment to Terry came eight days after agents had asked District Attorney David Roger to prosecute Boggs on the four felony counts.
About four months later, during a September hearing in Boggs’ residency and nanny case, Terry announced in court that he was stepping down as her attorney, saying, “I’ve received no compensation for any work that I’ve done on this.”
Sun reporter Tony Cook contributed to this story. Jeff German is the Sun’s senior investigative reporter.
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