According to a federal prosecutor, Michigan leads the nation in political corruption and, based on the statistics, Macomb County leads the state in shady politicians.
That makes Macomb the crooked capital of America.
Matthew Schneider, U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Michigan, said in a recent interview that Michigan has experienced about 18 corruption investigations for each of the last five years. By comparison, each state has had an average of one corruption case a year over the past five years, while more populated U.S. Attorney districts such as New York, Los Angeles and Chicago have had about four.
Scillian (left) interviewing Schneider
“Our statistics show (Michigan leads) the nation in corruption cases, by far,” Schneider told WDIV-TV anchor Devin Scillian in an interview at last week’s Mackinac Policy Conference.
According to The Macomb Daily, those nabbed in Michigan have included elected officials from Detroit and its suburbs, more than a dozen police officers, millionaire businessmen and more. In March, the Metro Times reported that more than 40 people have been snagged in an ongoing federal probe on charges ranging from extortion to bribery to money laundering and conspiracy to distribute drugs.
More than half of those cases originated in Macomb County, beginning with a flurry of arrests in 2016-17.
“We’ve indicted 22 … in Macomb County and 10 of those are government employees,” Schneider said. “The rest are citizens passing bribes.”
The FBI organized the Detroit Area Public Corruption Task Force, made up of local, state and federal investigators, in 2012 after concluding corruption had become a “generational, systemic part of the culture” of southeast Michigan.
Schneider, who indicated the probe continues to develop new targets, insisted the statistics do not mean that Michigan is the most corrupt state, rather that the law enforcement crackdown here has been the most effective in the nation.
“We definitely have a more significant corruption issue here in the Michigan region,” he said. “But we are rooting it out a lot more than other people. We have a long-term campaign here to root out public corruption.”
Photos: Shutterstock.com and WDIV-TV screenshot
