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Arkansas Soap Opera (Gwen Moritz Editor’s Note)

4 min read

I’ve accepted another invitation to speak to the Arkansas chapter of the Certified Fraud Examiners in a few months. I love those folks, but they are gluttons for punishment.

I thought I’d have to scramble for material since they’ve already heard my greatest hits of Arkansas white-collar crimes, and last year I talked for most of two hours (as instructed) on the convoluted public corruption case that ensnared former state Sen. Jon Woods and others.

“Ain’t nobody wants to hear another 100 minutes on corrupt politicians,” I told the CFE who invited me.

Then last week, the hearing into former state Sen. Jeremy Hutchinson’s motion to suppress evidence in his federal criminal case felt like manna from heaven. So much new material, thanks to reporting by the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette and Arkansas Times, which staffed the two-day hearing in U.S. District Judge Kristine Baker’s court.

I’m thinking of calling my CFE session “Arkansas Soap Opera.”

Julie McGee, a restaurant worker with whom Jeremy Hutchinson commenced a tumultuous affair in 2010, turned over several electronic devices to the FBI in 2012 during one of their rancorous breakups. Their relationship was not news; she was arrested in 2012 for assault after slamming him in the head with a taxidermied alligator.

But it was news that she went to the FBI with attorney Dan Greenberg, whom Hutchinson had defeated for the Republican state Senate nomination in 2010.

Material from a computer she gave to the feds contained evidence that was ultimately used to charge Hutchinson with corruption for spending campaign funds on personal expenses, including the care and feeding of his mistress. The question before Judge Baker last week was whether McGee owned the computer and thus had the right to consent to a search of its contents or whether she stole it from Hutchinson, whose Fourth Amendment right against a warrantless search was violated.

It’s a fair legal question, but it’s rather late to salvage Hutchinson’s reputation. Federal prosecutors in Missouri have separately charged him with accepting bribes from the infamous Preferred Family Healthcare — payer of kickbacks and bribes, through executive and lobbyist Rusty Cranford, to Woods and former legislators Micah Neal and Hank Wilkins IV.

Hutchinson’s relationship with Texarkana attorney John Goodson also came up in last week’s hearing, and the reporting on that was most eye-opening. Goodson, it’s good to remember, is the chairman of the University of Arkansas Board of Trustees and is in the process of divorcing state Supreme Court Justice Courtney Hudson Goodson. His wildly successful technique for settling class-action cases in Miller County was declared illegal by the U.S. Supreme Court in a unanimous ruling in 2013.

Hutchinson was being paid thousands of dollars a month by Goodson’s law firm, and Hutchinson and Goodson agree that it was a retainer for referring class-action work — definitely not payment for legislative action, as McGee believed when she first talked to the FBI.

And a sweet non-bribe it was. Goodson told the Times that his partner, Matt Keil, lined up the arrangement with Hutchinson. For six or eight years, the firm paid Hutchinson a retainer that started at $20,000 a month and dwindled to $5,000 a month.

“I’m told we paid him about $690,000. He brought three class action cases that brought us $740,000, so we made $50,000 off it,” Goodson told the Times’ Max Brantley.

So, if my math is correct, more than 90% of the proceeds of those cases went to Hutchinson as a paid-in-advance referral fee. If, as Goodson indicated to Brantley, his firm paid similar referral retainers to other attorneys, I’m forced to rethink my assumption that Goodson was a rich man.

In fact, it may explain why (according to a filing in his divorce case) Goodson’s lawyer told his estranged wife’s lawyer that Goodson is “broke,” as we reported in Whispers a few weeks ago.

Yes, I think I’ll have plenty to talk about when I visit the Certified Fraud Examiners in September.


On Wednesday, the day after Hutchinson’s evidentiary hearing ended, Robin Raveendra of Little Rock, a former Preferred Family Healthcare executive, pleaded guilty in Missouri to participating in a conspiracy to bribe Jeremy Hutchinson.

As for Julie McGee — well, I don’t know whether to believe her or not, but I think it’s safe to say that married politicians need to be way more careful with whom they choose to start affairs.


Email Gwen Moritz, editor of Arkansas Business, at GMoritz@ABPG.com and follow her on Twitter at @gwenmoritz.
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