Ex-Gary Mayor admits to using campaign funds to buy house
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Jerome Prince, the former Democratic mayor of Gary, is pleading guilty to wire fraud in federal court.
The longtime Gary politician admitted in court documents last week he used $26,000 in campaign donations to buy a house in the Miller Beach neighborhood on the northeast side of the city.
Our partners at The Times of Northwest Indiana report that Prince, 60, submitted a guilty plea to Judge Philip Simon which asks for one year of probation, with no home detention requirements. As part of the deal, Prince would pay back the $26,750 he took from his campaign coffers.
In court documents, Prince admitted to withdrawing money from his campaign in the fall of 2019 and then using that money to finance payments on his personal residence. Prince says he did not report the withdrawals.
“I misled donors by falsely representing and causing to be falsely represented, directly and by omission, that donations made to the committee to elect Jerome Prince for Mayor campaign committee were being used for campaign purposes, when, in fact, I used a portion of that money provided…for my own personal purposes, including using committee funds as part of the real estate transaction to finance the purchase of my personal residence,” Prince wrote in his plea affidavit.
Prince won the 2020 election, defeating incumbent Karen Freeman-Wilson. In the 2023 municipal elections, Prince ran for reelection but lost in the Democratic Party primary to Indiana Senator Eddie Melton. Prince left office in December of last year. Prior to his time as mayor, Prince served in the U.S. Marines, and was the Lake County Assessor from 2015 to 2019. Before that, he was a city council member for over a decade.
Federal prosecutors charged Prince with wire fraud on Oct. 9, and Prince submitted his plea deal on the same day.
It is now up to judge Simon whether to accept the deal, which sees no jail time for Prince. No date for a sentencing has been set as of Thursday.