Former Richardson mayor Laura Maczka was sentenced on Thursday to six years in prison for trading political favors for sex and cash from her lover, developer Mark Jordan.
Maczka and Jordan — who was also sentenced to six years — were convicted of bribery and tax fraud in a conspiracy spanning a decade in which Maczka moved to approve Jordan’s real estate projects, in spite of City Council opposition to them, as he lavished her with gifts and they carried on a sexual affair.
“You abused your position of power,” U.S. Judge Amos Mazzant told the former mayor during the hearing, according to the Dallas Morning News. “Laura told her friends on several occasions that she was at ‘mayor conferences’ when she was actually with Mark at a swanky hotel in a different city,” Mazzant wrote in a court order filed Wednesday.
The Plano couple — who have since married — could have faced as many as 26 years. However, the government asked the judge for just 10 years — and the defense disclosed that at one point prosecutors offered a plea deal that included only six months of jail time.
Maczka had campaigned for mayor in 2013 on a “no new apartments” platform, but she changed her tune when Jordan began romancing her and showering her with gifts. At the time, he was angling for city approval to develop a prime plot of land alongside the busy U.S. Highway 75.
Prosecutors added that in addition to sex, Maczka received $18,000 in cash, $40,000 by check, a Mercedes convertible, and $24,000 in home renovations from Jordan in exchange for her votes for his projects.
The total value of the benefits Maczka accepted from Jordan, added up to over $130,000, according to prosecutors, including at least a dozen trips to exotic locations usually in fabulous accommodations overlooking the ocean.
Word of their adulterous affair first made headlines in 2015 and scandalized the conservative Dallas suburb.
Their public corruption case ended up going to trial twice due to an initial mistrial. The state government added tax fraud charges in the second trial, and the jury convicted them on the tax charges as well as bribery in July last year.
“Unlike narcotics or fraud defendants, whose conduct affects the physical safety or financial security of individuals, the defendants’ crime offended the very core of the American system — the integrity of the democratic vote,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Anand
[The Dallas Morning News] — James Bell