A 2015 indictment against Joseph Palermo Jr., 73, remains sealed after the Calcasieu Parish District Attorney’s Office unsuccessfully tried on Friday in state district court to unseal the document as part of its defense in a lawsuit filed by the local businessman.
Palermo pleaded guilty Feb. 27, 2015, in state district court to two misdemeanors — possession of stolen things under $500 and operating a trailer without a valid safety inspection sticker — the day after an indictment was returned against him and sealed.
Palermo at the time hadn’t seen the indictment, which was unsealed only for him in January.
As part of the plea agreement, Palermo was placed on two years’ unsupervised probation and agreed to forfeit $1.2 million in reimbursement for the costs of investigation and prosecution. The amount was to be paid in three installments of $400,000.
In June 2016, Palermo filed suit in East Baton Rouge Parish contending the state breached the terms of the agreement by continuing to investigate “already disposed of charges,” said attorney Karl Koch. In the suit, Palermo seeks a dismissal of his final payment and to be given back the money he has already paid.
“They are claiming that we have investigated him on stuff that we settled in the plea agreement. It is a lie, and they know it is a lie,” said John DeRosier, district attorney. “This is not about investigations. This is about him trying to find a way to keep from paying what he has agreed to pay.”
He said Palermo agreed to pay the money “in forfeiture of ill-gotten gains in the video poker business for the cost of investigation and prosecution.”
Palermo’s attorneys contend the money was extorted from him and that the D.A.’s Office further breached the plea agreement by seeking to unseal the 2015 indictment. DeRosier said prosecutors sought the unsealing so they could “show the judge in Baton Rouge and everybody else” that the allegations that they “extracted the money from (Palermo) are untrue.”
Koch said “a deal is a deal” in regard to the sealed document. “This is a dismissed case with bogus charges. I don’t know of a single person in the world that would choose to have that made public,” he said.
Judge Ron Ware agreed with Palermo’s attorneys that the sealing of the indictment was part of the plea agreement and denied prosecutors’ motion. DeRosier said his office will appeal Ware’s decision.
The American Press and KPLC-TV later made a joint request to unseal the document. Ware set a hearing on the request for June 12.
Koch also said that allegations “the state has been trying to push for a number of years” have been found legally deficient. “The federal court system looked at them and threw them out the door. This has ultimately been pushed by a couple of individuals formerly with the Attorney General’s Office. Some of them have been fired,” he said.
DeRosier said that the “feds determined that they could not legally prosecute Palermo under the mail fraud statute for items involving a state gaming permit” and that is why they didn’t prosecute.
He also spoke about Scott Bailey, the former attorney general investigator who he said assisted his office and state police with “preparing the factual basis in indicting Palermo.”
“After Attorney General Jeff Landry was elected, I met with him in Lake Charles and told him that I had heard that Joe Palermo was a substantial contributor to his campaign and that one of the conditions precedent to that was that he fire Scott Bailey,” DeRosier said.
“I had that meeting with Jeff Landry, and I told him that if this is true, do not do this. The next morning, Jeff Landry had a crew from the Attorney General’s Office come into Lake Charles to fire Scott Bailey.”
The American Press contacted the Attorney General’s Office for a response, but hadn’t received one by press time.
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