Former Alaska state Rep. Beverly Masek began serving her six-month prison sentence this week at the minimum-security Federal Correctional Institution-Victorville in Adelanto, Calif.
The prison camp for women is in the desert south of Barstow and about 85 miles northeast of Los Angeles. A medium-security facility for men is in the same U.S. Bureau of Prisons complex.
Masek, 46, a Republican who served five terms in the Legislature from Willow, pleaded guilty to a felony charge of bribery conspiracy for accepting more than $4,000 in illegal payments from former Veco Corp. Chief Executive Bill Allen and his son Mark. She was sentenced by U.S. District Judge Ralph Beistline in September.
She is now one of only two felons convicted in the federal corruption investigation in Alaska to be behind bars. The other is former Rep. Tom Anderson of Anchorage, who is at a federal prison camp in Sheridan, Ore., with a release date of April 9, 2012.
Two other former legislators, Pete Kott and Vic Kohring, are free while they appeal their 2007 convictions. Allen and a former Veco vice president, Rick Smith, have been sentenced but do not yet have spaces assigned in the federal prison system, according to the Bureau of Prisons. Allen got three years and Smith 21 months.
Eleven people in all have pleaded guilty or have been found guilty by juries in the investigation, while a twelfth is scheduled to be tried in Anchorage next September.
Anchorage Daily News / adn.com