Ken Jenne Sentenced -- What about Conrad Scherer?

Can someone explain how Conrad Scherer escaped indictment?

Here you have a prominent South Florida law firm paying for the Sheriff's Mercedes and insurance for years, and over that time billing $200k for 17 active BSO matters:

The tally included $107,995 in car payments and insurance costs that his former law firm, Conrad, Scherer & Jenne, paid from 1998 until recently. Shortly before he became sheriff in January 1998, Jenne asked his law firm to buy him a used 1994 Mercedes convertible. The firm paid for the car and its insurance during Jenne's tenure as sheriff, income he never reported. The firm also did legal work for the Sheriff's Office.

As the Miami Herald points out:

Jenne worked at Conrad, Scherer & Jenne from 1992 until he became sheriff in 1998. Like other partners, Jenne drove a car paid for by the firm's investment arm, CSJ Investments.

The car -- a 1994 Mercedes-Benz E320 that cost $61,300 -- was bought with a 60-month loan in 1997.

By the time Jenne left the firm a few months later, only one payment had been made on the luxury convertible. The firm continued to pay off the car -- about $79,000 in loan payments and $30,000 in insurance -- after Jenne had become Broward's top law enforcer.

Jenne did not report those payments on his federal income taxes, prosecutors said.

The firm's managing partner, William Scherer Jr., tried to transfer the car's title into Jenne's name in 2003 when the payments were complete, according to the documents released Wednesday.

The title transfer never happened, and in 2005 Jenne rejected a firm adminstrator's request that he take care of it.

''Jenne told [the administrator] that it would look bad in the press if the title were transferred to Jenne and asked if it could be transferred at some point in the future,'' the documents show.

Scherer agreed, and the car remained in the firm's name and the firm continued to pay for car's insurance.

Here's the great John DeGroot on the fall of Jenne:

All of which is how and why I believe Ken Jenne fell from grace.

First, by bullshitting himself and the public by distorting BSO’s crime stats to make BSO appear miraculously better than any other major law enforcement agency in the nation. (Which is how and why Jenne and I parted company, never to speak to each other again after I called Broward’s most powerful politician and my long-time friend a shameless liar.)

But an ocean of blood has flowed under the bridge since then.

Did I begin to suspect the man of even more egregious sins than his self-aggrandizing, statistical bullshit that, caused our falling out?.

Yes.

Little by slowly, I began connecting certain dots which I’d chosen to ignore in the past – which eventually led me to share both my doubts and certain data with the Broward State Attorney’s Office and the U.S. Justice Department.

But again, that’s all blood under the bridge.

While Ken Jenne appears stripped of power and headed for jail.

Leaving me filled with sorrow over all that might have been.

Because the sad thing of it is (and was), the Good Ken Jenne did far outweighed the Bad. Period. And no one will ever convince me otherwise.

May he one day find the peace and comfort that have eluded the man for all 60 years of his remarkable life.

John, your next assignment is to find out how Conrad Scherer managed to wiggle out of their own complicity.