Texas attorney general indicted on fraud charges
Republican Attorney General of Texas Ken Paxton has been indicted by a grand jury in Dallas on charges of securities fraud.
Paxton is charged with two counts of first-degree securities fraud and one count of third-degree failure to register with the states securities board, all tied to his clients and investors for two companies who solicited jobs when he was a member of the Texas House of Representatives.
The three-count indictment against Paxton was handed in earlier in the week and is due to be unsealed on Monday. The attorney general is set to turn himself over to authorities at Collin County Jail the same day.
According to Kent Schaffer, the special prosecutor of the case, Paxton is accused of deceiving investors of Servergy Inc., a tech firm in his hometown of McKinney, in the most serious charge. He encouraged the investors into making a $600,000 investment in 2011, while pretending to be an investor himself. He then made a commission on their investment without their knowledge.
The investors were all close friends to the attorney general and even included Representative Byron Cook, one of his former colleagues.
Paxton’s spokesman, Anthony Holm, dismissed all charges as a political witch-hunt. He accused the grand jury of being manipulated by an anti-Paxton blogger and questioned the eagerness displayed by the special prosecutor in spilling the details of the case to the media.
If convicted, Paxton might be facing a punishment of life in prison or a 5 to 99 year sentence for his first-degree charges, according to Texas law. His third-degree charge is also punishable by a sentence of 2 to 10 years in prison.
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