Former Arkansas state Sen. Jeremy Hutchinson entered two negotiated guilty pleas on Tuesday, June 25. The two charges Hutchinson pleaded guilty for are both related to corruption investigations, with Hutchinson admitting his guilt on bribery and filing a false tax return. Jeremy is the nephew of Gov. Asa Hutchinson and the son of former U.S. Sen. Tim Hutchinson.
The plea deal struck appears to have significantly reduced the federal felonies that Hutchinson is being charged for. Prior to the plea, he was facing a wall of 12 total fraud charges in Arkansas alone. Hutchinson’s guilty plea only includes one count of tax fraud and one for bribery.
The tax fraud charge is for his filing of a false return in 2011, and includes his use of $150,000 worth of campaign money for his own personal use and underreporting $270,000 worth of income to the IRS.
The bribery count that Hutchinson pled guilty for revolved around the former senator accepting at least $157,000 from an unnamed orthodontist, who was attempting to use the monies, under the guise of “legal fees,” to persuade Hutchinson to change state law to the orthodontist’s benefit.
In addition to the crimes committed in Arkansas, Hutchinson also faces another laundry list of felonies out of the state of Missouri. He is expected to reach a negotiated guilty plea for those charges, as well – reduced to one count of conspiracy to defraud the government. That case also centers around bribery and related activity, as Preferred Family Healthcare provided Hutchinson with monies disguised as legal fees in order to receive preferential legislative support related to Medicaid funding.
Between Arkansas and Missouri, Hutchinson was staring down the barrel of more than two dozen federal felony charges. Per his plea agreement(s), he will likely only be sentenced to three of them.
Hutchinson resigned from the state Senate last August after a federal grand jury in Little Rock indicted him on the12 counts of wire and tax fraud.
As of this publishing, no sentencing details have been released, but Hutchinson is expected to serve multiple years in prison and faces up to $350,000 in fines.
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