Former area attorney and kids-for-cash figure Robert Powell has reached an agreement with federal prosecutors to pay $3.5 million in restitution and will be sentenced on tax evasion charges next week, according to court records.<\/p>\n
Powell, 66, of Palm Beach, Florida, pleaded guilty in August 2024 to evading taxes connected to \u201csubstantial legal fees\u201d he earned over a 12-year period at his former Luzerne County-based firm, The Powell Law Group.<\/p>\n
But his sentencing hearing has been on hold indefinitely as his attorney, Stephen S. Stallings, has been engaged in a lengthy dispute with the U.S. Attorney\u2019s Office about the amount of tax loss the government incurred.<\/p>\n
In a recent order, U.S. District Judge Malachy E. Mannion wrote that the parties have now agreed that for sentencing purposes the amount of tax loss was between $1.5 million and $3.5 million. Powell has also agreed to pay $3.5 million in restitution \u2014 although the IRS reserved the right to pursue additional back taxes if it determines the amount was higher, the judge wrote.<\/p>\n
The U.S. Attorney\u2019s Office had asserted that Powell owes the government more than $7 million he failed to pay during a tax evasion scheme of \u201cstaggering\u201d scope. Stallings countered that the government\u2019s suggested amount was off the mark by more than $4 million due to accounting \u201cmistakes.\u201d<\/p>\n
The prosecution had also blasted Powell for failing to file his tax returns or to provide any financial information, as required by his plea agreement.<\/p>\n
Mannion\u2019s order, filed Jan. 15, canceled a presentencing evidentiary hearing aimed at settling the dispute about the amount of tax loss and scheduled Powell\u2019s sentencing hearing for Feb. 5.<\/p>\n
Powell will face a maximum prison term of up to five years.<\/p>\n
Powell previously served 18 months in prison for failing to report a felony and being an accessory to a conspiracy in connection with Luzerne County\u2019s infamous \u201ckids-for-cash\u201d case.<\/p>\n
Prosecutors say Powell paid $770,000 to two corrupt county judges, Mark A. Ciavarella Jr. and Michael T. Conahan, who then funneled juvenile defendants to two private, for-profit detention centers Powell partly owned.<\/p>\n
Conahan, 73, was initially sentenced to 17\u00bd years in prison on racketeering conspiracy charges but had his sentence commuted in December 2024.<\/p>\n
Ciavarella, 75, is still serving a 28-year prison sentence at Federal Correctional Institution-Butner in North Carolina on honest services mail-fraud charges.<\/p>\n
He is scheduled to be released on June 18, 2034.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Former area attorney and kids-for-cash figure Robert Powell has reached an agreement with federal prosecutors to pay $3.5…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":96406,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[46,182,803,139,28,178,180,179,802],"class_list":["post-96405","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-scranton","tag-courts","tag-local-news","tag-luzerne-county","tag-news","tag-pennsylvania","tag-scranton","tag-scranton-headlines","tag-scranton-news","tag-top-stories-cvc"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/96405","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=96405"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/96405\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/96406"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=96405"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=96405"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=96405"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}