A former Kentucky court official stole more than $400,000 from two trusts, a federal grand jury has charged.
The grand jury indicted John Anthony Schmidt, 66, on one charge of wire fraud and two charges of bank fraud.
Schmidt, an attorney, was the master commissioner in Bullitt County from the early 1990s until a judge removed him from the post in 2019.
Master commissioners in Kentucky help circuit courts with matters such as court-ordered property sales.
The state Judicial Conduct Commission ruled in 2021 that Schmidt had misappropriated $81,000 from the sale of a property in Bullitt County.
Smith received the money in two separate checks but rather than depositing them in an official account, he changed the endorsement stamps on both and put the money in an account he controlled, the commission found.
The commission said it would have removed Schmidt from office as a result of the misconduct, but a judge had already removed him.
The federal grand jury charged that Schmidt stole far more from the trusts. The thefts totaled $435,000 between September 2014 and January 2019, according to the indictment.
Schmidt had access to the assets of the two trusts and switched money from them to his personal account or an account of his law firm, the indictment said.
In one case, Schmidt was trustee of a trust set up to pay benefits to a widow, according to a civil lawsuit.
The trust contained $586,271 in cash and a commercial building valued at $330,000 when Schmidt took over as trustee in 2012, but the beneficiary discovered in 2019 that Schmidt had transferred at least $194,500 from the trust to his accounts, the lawsuit alleged.
The federal indictment did not disclose if that trust was one of the two covered in the charges.
He allegedly used money from the trusts for personal expenditures. In at least two cases, Schmidt used money from one of the trusts to replace funds missing from the master commissioner’s account, the indictment said.
Schmidt had his initial appearance in federal court in Louisville Wednesday and pleaded not guilty.
He faces up to 80 years in prison if convicted on all three federal charges, though his sentence would likely be significantly less under advisory guidelines.
Schmidt also was charged this week in state court in Bullitt County with abuse of public trust and theft.
Those charges relate in part to the $81,000 cited in the Judicial Conduct Commission ruling, but also to other alleged wrongdoing, said Chris Boone, a detective with the Hillview Police Department, who investigated.
The alleged thefts from the trusts are not part of the state case, Boone said.
“We found some evidence of theft that we’re charging him on,” Boone said.
State and federal authorities can prosecute Schmidt at the same time.