Home Detention, 3 Years Probation, and $3,000 Fine for Trashing Blackberry

According to this Department of Justice press release, lobbyist Cecelia Grimes was sentenced to home detention, three years probation and a $3,000 for destroying evidence in a public corruption case.   

Evidence presented at the plea hearing revealed that within six days of the FBI’s service of the two grand-jury subpoenas, Grimes placed some documents that she had stored in her house into trash bags, which she then brought to the front of her house for collection as garbage.   These documents included items related to Grimes’s travel and to Representative A’s campaigns.   FBI agents retrieved the garbage bags that contained the discarded documents, which were never produced to law enforcement authorities.

Grimes also destroyed e-mails that were stored on her Blackberry device according to information presented at the plea hearing.   In early November 2006, Grimes placed her Blackberry device in a trash can near a restaurant in southeastern Pennsylvania.   Grimes discarded her Blackberry for the purpose of keeping the FBI from reviewing certain of her emails that would be of interest to the FBI.

The Hill has more.

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