BRADENTON, Fla. - Former Florida-based investment banker Kevin McCarty Friday was sentenced to eight months in federal prison for failing to report his wife's illegal acts, which included using her influence as a Palm Beach County commissioner to steer bond business to the firms for which her husband worked.
Kevin McCarty, 60, pleaded guilty in January shortly after his wife, Mary McCarty, 54, resigned from the county commission and issued a statement publicly apologizing for her crimes, which also included accepting deeply discounted hotel rooms from companies doing business with the county.
The couple lived in Delray Beach, a municipality in Palm Beach County.
In a letter last Thursday to the court urging leniency for her husband, who faced a year in prison, Mary McCarty asked that the judge take into account her husband's 91-year-old widowed mother, who depends on Kevin, her only son. Mary McCarty also wrote that she and her husband had been looking forward to retiring to a home they'd built in Maine.
"Kevin had built up a nice deferred compensation package with Bear Stearns that was all lost when Bear Stearns collapsed; I had achieved some success in government and thought I might do some consulting," Mary McCarty wrote to the judge overseeing her husband's case. "The fact that I am writing this letter pretty much illustrates our plans changed."
McCarty, worked for Bear, Stearns & Co. and Raymond James & Associates Inc.
Mary McCarty on Friday also pleaded guilty in a separate court hearing to a negotiated count of conspiracy to commit honest services fraud. She will be sentenced June 4, and faces up to five years in prison.
The couple is paying $272,000 in restitution.
The case got quick response from Palm Beach County and Delray Beach, with each conducting separate investigations into their bond issuance practices.
Last week, an attorney hired by Delray Beach issued a report that found no evidence of wrongdoing among city officials or employees. The report did recommend that the city select underwriters competitively and that it document the procedures used to select its underwriters.
Palm Beach County's clerk and comptroller, Sharon Bock, is doing a comprehensive examination of the county's debt issuance practices and expects to issue a report in early April.
