Eberhart
A former state lawmaker representing part of Bartholomew County has reported to prison after being last month to just over a year behind bars on a corruption charge.
Former state Rep. Sean Eberhart, R-Shelbyville, arrived Thursday at the Federal Correctional Institution in Manchester, Kentucky, located about 75 miles south of Lexington, according to the Federal Bureau of Prisons. A release date was not yet listed on the bureau’s online inmate locator as of midday Friday.
The facility is described by the Federal Bureau of Prisons as a medium-security federal correctional institution with an adjacent minimum-security satellite camp. There are 980 inmates being held at the medium-security prison and 87 at the minimum-security camp.
Eberhart is currently being held at the minimum-security camp, Federal Bureau of Prisons spokesperson Randilee Giamusso told The Republic on Friday. Inmates at the camp are housed in dormitories divided into two-person cubicles, according to Zoukis Consulting Group, which claims to have profiled every federal prison.
The former Indiana representative is not the first lawmaker to be held at the camp. Former Missouri Sen. Jeff Smith served his sentence at the camp after pleading guilty to two counts of obstruction of justice in 2009, according to ABC News.
Smith, who later published a book about his experience, wrote in an article in Politico that he was assigned to perform manual labor at the camp. He states in the article that he and some of his fellow inmates were tasked with unloading trucks in the prison food warehouse and moving about 35,000 to 40,000 pounds of food per day in and out of freezers.
The medium-security prison also has held some notable inmates over the years, including Proud Boys leader Enrique Tarrio, who is currently serving his 22-year sentence for seditious conspiracy for his role in the Jan. 6, 2021, U.S. Capitol attack at the facility.
Eberhart, who represented Indiana House District 57 from January 2006 to November 2022, was sentenced in July to one year and one day in federal prison for supporting a bill favoring a casino in exchange for promises of lucrative employment.
The charge against Eberhart stemmed from efforts by Spectacle Entertainment to purchase two casinos on Lake Michigan in Gary and their state licenses and relocate them to inland locations in downtown Gary and Terre Haute, according to federal court filings.
Purchases and relocations of casinos in Indiana must be approved through the passage of a bill by both chambers of the state legislature and signed by the governor.
In 2019, a bill was introduced in the House Committee on Public Policy and later the House floor that would allow Spectacle to purchase the casinos and relocate them.
Eberhart was a member of the House Committee on Public Policy at the time, which had jurisdiction over matters concerning casinos and gaming in Indiana.
Around that time, an owner of Spectacle, identified in court records as “Individual A,” offered Eberhart future employment at Spectacle with an annual salary of $350,000 in exchange for advocating and voting to pass the bill on terms that were favorable to Spectacle.
Those terms included, among other things, reducing the originally proposed $100 million transfer fee that Spectacle would be required to pay to acquire the licenses of the two casinos and favorable tax incentives, court records state. The transfer fee was ultimately reduced to $20 million.
In March 2019, Eberhart advocated for removing the $100 million transfer fee from the bill during a House Committee on Public Policy hearing.
According to coverage by The (Munster) Times in March 2019, Eberhart “questioned the need to attach a $100 million fee” to relocation of the casinos.
“To me that’s a tough one to swallow,” Eberhart is quoted as saying. “That’s an extreme amount of money. If we had a private company, whether that’s a manufacturer or some other private company, come to us and say, ‘Hey, we want to invest $300 million on the Borman in Gary and want to invest $150 million in Terre Haute,’ we’d get out our checkbooks as the state of Indiana. We would be writing them a check. We would be giving them incentives. We would be begging them to make that investment.”
In April 2019, Eberhart communicated with an unidentified individual regarding the status of the bill and efforts to “make it right for (Individual A).” That same month, Eberhart advocated for a 20% tax rate that would save Spectacle tens of millions of dollars.
Court filings include text messages from Eberhart to an unidentified individual in which the former lawmaker states, “We’ve got work to do and 2 casinos to open.”
Eberhart is one of three current or former public officials representing part of Bartholomew County or the surrounding area who have faced criminal charges over roughly the past year.
In June 2023, state Rep. Jim Lucas, R-Seymour, received a year of supervised probation and a 180-day suspended jail sentence after pleading guilty to two misdemeanor charges for crashing his vehicle through an interstate guardrail while under the influence of alcohol and then fleeing the scene. A Jackson County judge later cut Lucas’ probation short by six months.
In May, former Jackson County Auditor Staci Eglen was arrested and is currently facing nine felonies, including three counts each of fraud, theft and official misconduct, after Indiana State Police accused her of creating fake invoices and submitting them to the county treasurer for reimbursement. A trial date has been scheduled in Jackson Circuit Court for Dec. 3.
