INDIANAPOLIS — Former Indiana state representative Sean Eberhart will spend a year and a day in prison, and will have to pay back $60,000, for conspiring to commit fraud while in office.
Eberhart was sentenced in federal court on July 10. He faced a maximum sentence of 5 years, but prosecutors asked the judge to be lenient when Eberhart pleaded guilty to the conspiracy in November of 2023.
Eberhart was a Republican who represented Indiana House District 57 for 16 years before leaving office in November of 2022.
According to court documents, a company called Spectacle Entertainment was looking to purchase two casinos located on Lake Michigan in Gary, Indiana, in 2018. The company wanted to relocate the facilities to downtown Gary and to Vigo County in western Indiana. The Legislature passed a bill approving the move in 2019.
Eberhart sat on the House Committee on Public Policy, which oversees casinos and gambling in Indiana. Prosecutors accused him of using his position to successfully advocate for the relocation and obtain favorable terms for the company, including tax incentives, in exchange for a future job that would pay at least $350,000 annually.
The embattled casino company has been the subject of several federal investigations in recent years.
In 2022, longtime casino executive John Keeler was sentenced, along with former Indiana state Sen. Brent Waltz, for their role in a scheme to illegally funnel gambling money into the lawmaker’s unsuccessful 2016 bid for congress.
Keeler, who was a Republican legislator for 16 years in the 1980s and 1990s, was sentenced to two months in federal prison and fined $55,000. The Indiana Gaming Commission forced Spectacle officials to give up their ownership stakes in Gary and Terre Haute casino projects following Keeler and Waltz’s indictments in 2020.
Waltz, a Republican from Greenwood, was sentenced to 10 months in federal prison for helping route about $40,000 in illegal contributions to his campaign and making false statements to the FBI.