Print

Email story

Comment

Email editor

'Club Fed' or real hard time?

Three convicted in a Tampa housing scheme will spend time in federal prisons.

By JEFF TESTERMAN
Published May 7, 2005

TAMPA - Four years ago, Steve LaBrake was the city of Tampa's housing boss, a $105,000-a-year executive putting the finishing touches on his new, 4,200-square-foot luxury home in South Tampa.

Today, LaBrake is inmate no. 41604-018 at the Federal Prison Camp in Pensacola. He has an assigned bunk bed in a brick barracks building. Inmates get a 5:30 a.m. wakeup call to begin an eight-hour detail of cutting grass and pulling weeds on prison grounds.

LaBrake's new pay: 12 cents an hour.

Convicted of conspiracy, wire fraud and bribery, LaBrake, 54, reported to the Panhandle prison camp April 28 to begin serving a five-year sentence handed down by U.S. District Judge Richard A. Lazzara in February.

With good behavior, LaBrake can earn 54 days a year off his sentence. With one week of prison time now served, he still has at least 222 more weeks to scratch off.

Chester M. Luney, the former executive director at the Tampa Hillsborough Action Plan who also was convicted in the bribery trial, also has reported to prison.

Luney, 60, arrived at the Federal Prison Camp at Montgomery, Ala., on April 29 to begin serving a two-year, nine-month sentence. An Air Force veteran who also worked as an $80,279-a-year Veterans Affairs psychologist, Luney requested the Montgomery facility, which is on the grounds of Maxwell Air Force Base.

The prison camps in Pensacola and Montgomery are classified as minimum-security facilities. They are without walls or gun towers, and house a mix of inmates, about 70 percent drug offenders and 30 percent white-collar criminals.

The Baltimore Ravens' $5.8-million-a-year running back Jamal Lewis began serving a four-month sentence at the Pensacola prison in February on charges arising from his use of a cell phone to set up a cocaine deal.

Joe Paulus, a former Wisconsin district attorney who pleaded guilty to taking bribes in 22 cases he prosecuted in Winnebago County, is serving a 58-month sentence there.

At both prisons, inmates take weekends off. After daily work details wrap up, they may watch TV or use recreational facilities. At Montgomery, that includes softball fields, basketball courts, pool tables, weight rooms, a library and a room for playing acoustical musical instruments.

But prison officials say the work camps aren't resorts.

"A lot of people have called it Club Fed," said David Fagan, case management coordinator at Pensacola. "But that just isn't so. It's a myth."

Inmates must wear institutional green pants and numbered shirts and work boots. They share communal toilets and showers. Their three meals a day consist of food that costs the government $2.60 a day per inmate.

"People on the outside have the perception (of a Club Fed)," said John Stahley, a case manager at Montgomery. "But I can tell you, people on the inside see it as a prison."

The third defendant in the Tampa bribery case has not yet been assigned to a facility by the Federal Bureau of Prisons.

Lynne McCarter LaBrake, a former city of Tampa housing employee who is married to Steve LaBrake, asked to serve her three-year, five-month sentence at Coleman Federal Correctional Institution, to be as close as possible to her two children.

The LaBrakes have a 3-year-old child born after Steve LaBrake divorced his first wife and had a vasectomy reversed. Lynne LaBrake also has a teenage daughter from a previous marriage. Coleman Correctional, in Sumter County, is about 60 miles north of Tampa.

"She hasn't been designated yet" for a prison, Frank Louderback, Lynne LaBrake's St. Petersburg attorney, said Friday. "I have no idea what the holdup is."

Louderback said he is poring over court transcripts and still working on preparing the appeal of the judgment and sentence given his client. Attorneys for Steve LaBrake and Luney are also filing appeals, though Lazzara ruled that all three defendants must begin their sentences while their appeals are considered.

Most of the charges in the corruption case revolve around the LaBrakes' four-bedroom, 31/2-bath luxury home at 3608 W Corona St. in South Tampa in 2001. They were convicted of trading favors for assistance in building the home from both Luney and local builder Dean R. Ryan.

Ryan, who became the U.S. government's star witness, admitted he built the shell of the home for $105,000 in exchange for 14 city housing contracts inflated by $3,000 apiece and handled by Luney's nonprofit. After cooperating with prosecutors, Ryan received five years' probation and was ordered to pay $72,000 restitution.

At Luney's Tampa-Hillsborough Action Plan, according to court testimony, housing contracts controlled by Steve LaBrake flowed from the city while Luney provided favor after favor to help build the Corona Street home. Luney signed what prosecutors called a "sham" lease on a Riverview home to improve the financial statement of Lynne LaBrake, paid $22,000 to have an aging home removed from the Corona Street property and agreed to pay Lynne LaBrake $34,100 for gift baskets, many filled with items already paid for by THAP.

Luney and the LaBrakes were ordered to be jointly responsible for $142,000 in restitution to the city's Housing and Urban Development Department programs.

Judge Lazzara also issued a stinging rebuke while sentencing the LaBrakes in February. Noting the couple's unrepentant attitude, Lazzara remarked that a culture of government favor-taking so permeated city government that it "clouded their ability to appreciate the criminality of their conduct."

Times researcher Cathy Wos contributed to this report. Jeff Testerman can be reached at 813 226-3422 or by e-mail at testerman@sptimes.com

[Last modified May 7, 2005, 01:08:53]