WASHINGTON (AP) — A former New Hampshire state legislator who processed checks for John Kerry’s 2004 presidential campaign was sentenced Thursday to a year and a half in prison for stealing more than $100,000 of the money.
Shane Tessimond of Lincoln, N.H., admitted he took checks mailed to the campaign’s Washington headquarters and had a friend deposit them in several local bank accounts opened under the name “Kerry LLC.” He also said he and the friend ran up $4,000 in unauthorized campaign credit card charges.
The pair also acknowledged that they took $20,000 in checks from another of Tessimond’s employers, a nonprofit called the Employers Council on Flexible Compensation.
Former Kerry ’04 Worker Sentenced to Prison
Another former Kerry worker, Geoff Wetrosky, was never prosecuted for stealing Republican campaign signs and then voting illegally in a local election (Guinta vs Baines) while working for Baines and visiting Lawyer and then-NH Democrat Party Chair Kathy Sullivan. After Guinta prevailed over Baines, Wetrosky fled to his home state of South Dakota where he is a legal resident. More recently, a reporter from South Dakota told CNHT that Wetrosky told her he had rented an apartment during his stay in NH when asked about this. CNHT has to date, found no evidence to substantiate this claim of having rented an apartment, and the address given at the time he was in NH was Sullivan’s. Wetrosky was more recently running the Hillary for President campaign in South Dakota in 2008.