JUSTICE! Tim Eyman’s pals fined $1 million for their role in illegal kickback scheme

Asso­ciates of dis­graced ini­tia­tive pro­mot­er Tim Eyman have been ordered to pay the State of Wash­ing­ton more than a mil­lion dol­lars in penal­ties and court costs for their role in an ille­gal kick­back scheme that fun­neled mon­ey into to Tim Eyman’s pock­ets, a Thurston Coun­ty Supe­ri­or Court judge decid­ed yesterday.

Judge James Dixon signed off on an order penal­iz­ing Eyman’s co-defen­dants after hav­ing entered a default judg­ment against them ear­li­er this year.

The co-defen­dants include William Agazarm of Bris­tol, Con­necti­cut (the son in law of Eddie Agazarm, one of Eyman’s pals) and Cit­i­zen Solu­tions, LLC (the firm con­trolled by William Agazarm and Roy Ruffi­no, also one of Eyman’s pals.)

“This judg­ment reflects the seri­ous and inten­tion­al vio­la­tions of Washington’s cam­paign finance laws com­mit­ted by Mr. Agazarm and Cit­i­zen Solu­tions,” said Attor­ney Gen­er­al Bob Fer­gu­son in a statement.

“Mr. Agazarm and Cit­i­zen Solu­tions know­ing­ly par­tic­i­pat­ed in a scheme to hide how con­tri­bu­tions to Tim Eyman’s cam­paigns were real­ly being used.”

The scheme — which was sus­pect­ed by NPI and oth­er Eyman oppo­nents to exist long before it was proven in court by Fer­gu­son — worked like this:

• Dis­graced ini­tia­tive pro­mot­er Tim Eyman would cook up an ini­tia­tive for wreck­ing gov­ern­ment in some way in Wash­ing­ton State, then find wealthy bene­fac­tors to pitch the scheme to, like the Asso­ci­a­tion of Wash­ing­ton Busi­ness (AWB) and its affil­i­at­ed trade organizations.
• Eyman would tell the bene­fac­tors that he need­ed a cer­tain sum to qual­i­fy the scheme for the bal­lot. For exam­ple, he might claim to need $1 mil­lion, when in real­i­ty, he’d only need around half that for a sig­na­ture drive.
• Upon receiv­ing cash and/or com­mit­ments in sup­port of the scheme, Eyman would hire his bud­dies at “Cit­i­zen Solu­tions” to con­duct the sig­na­ture drive.
• Eyman would then have Cit­i­zen Solu­tions secret­ly fun­nel funds back to him that weren’t actu­al­ly need­ed to pay peti­tion­ers, in vio­la­tion of the law.

Any­one look­ing at Eyman’s pub­lic dis­clo­sure reports would see that he was pay­ing him­self a salary out of cam­paign funds — a prac­tice that began after Eyman was caught lying about tak­ing mon­ey from his donors in 2002 — but not that he was dou­ble dip­ping by arrang­ing for kick­backs from his chief vendor.

Eyman and his pals went to great lengths to con­ceal their kick­back scheme.

For exam­ple:

“Eyman had Cit­i­zen Solu­tions’ own­ers divide his kick­backs among his wife, Karen, and their minor chil­dren, so none of the checks would be more than $13,000,” the Attor­ney Gen­er­al’s office not­ed in its news release detail­ing Judge Dixon’s find­ing. “Accord­ing to Karen Eyman’s depo­si­tion, she and the chil­dren were unaware of the pay­ments, even though the checks were made out to them.”

“Eyman wrote to one of the own­ers [Roy Ruffi­no]: ‘You gen­er­ous­ly gave me $9900 on Sep­tem­ber 22nd (and a nice bot­tle of cham­pagne!!) so that leaves $35,100 for the rest of 2012 and still $39,000 for 2013. … I ask that you please sched­ule a few more lunch­es from now until Decem­ber 31st so you can ‘max gift’ by the end of the year. You’re mak­ing great progress on this and I con­tin­ue to be extreme­ly grate­ful for your con­tin­ued help on it.’ ”

“The Court finds that the Cit­i­zen Solu­tions Defen­dants not only knew the extent of Defen­dant Eyman’s scheme, but active­ly assist­ed with his vio­la­tions, help­ing him mis­lead con­trib­u­tors into believ­ing their con­tri­bu­tions would go to sup­port bal­lot ini­tia­tives, when in fact, they were ben­e­fit­ing Defen­dant Eyman per­son­al­ly,” Judge James Dixon wrote in his order approv­ing $1 mil­lion in penalties.

“Cru­cial­ly, the Cit­i­zen Solu­tions Defen­dants assist­ed Defen­dant Eyman in laun­der­ing pay­ments pur­port­ed­ly for sig­na­ture gath­er­ing, which were made after the sig­na­ture gath­er­ing was com­plet­ed and accept­ed by the Cit­i­zen Solu­tions Defen­dants sole­ly to con­ceal that they were being fun­neled to Defen­dant Eyman.”

Here’s a break­down of all the penal­ties approved by the court:

• Agazarm to pay $150,000 in civ­il penalties;
• Cit­i­zen Solu­tions, LLC to pay $150,000 in civ­il penalties;
• Agazarm and Cit­i­zen Solu­tions joint­ly to pay $117,500 in unpaid con­tempt sanc­tions; and
• Agazarm and Citzen Solu­tions to pay $622,255.67 in costs and fees.

Alto­geth­er, Tim Eyman’s co-defen­dants owe a total of $1,039,755 67.

Eyman has yet to be penal­ized for his role in the scheme.

This judg­ment has been a long time in coming.

Final­ly, jus­tice is being served upon the peo­ple who enabled Tim Eyman to line his pock­ets at the expense of his donors, who were duped into over­pay­ing for sig­na­tures to qual­i­fy destruc­tive schemes to the Wash­ing­ton State ballot.

Now it’s time for Tim Eyman to face the music himself.