Cronin reports to Ill. prison

Staff report

GREENVILLE, Ill.

Photo

Former Mahoning County Common Pleas Judge Maureen A. Cronin

Maureen A. Cronin, a former Mahoning County Common Pleas Court judge, has self-reported to a minimum-security prison camp here to begin serving the 27-month sentence a federal judge imposed on her.

Cronin arrived and was booked into the prison at 9 a.m. Central Time on Wednesday, the day she was required to report to the prison.

U.S. District Judge Sara Lioi imposed the prison time and a $4,000 fine on Cronin on Feb. 23, after she pleaded guilty to two felony counts of honest-services mail fraud.

Cronin, 56, of Canfield Road, Youngstown, pleaded guilty to accepting and failing to report an $18,000 no-interest cash loan from Flora Cafaro, part-owner of the Cafaro Co., which had numerous civil lawsuits before her while she was a judge.

Cronin turned to alcohol and gambling after the death of her mother and longtime boyfriend within a year of each other, and she took the money to help pay off her growing gambling debt, said her lawyer, J. Gerald Ingram.

Cronin is being housed with about 270 other prisoners in a satellite prison camp for female offenders adjacent to the Federal Correctional Institution in Greenville.

The Greenville facility is 63 miles from Springfield, Ill., and 43 miles from St. Louis.

The female-inmates camp at Greenville is a dormitory-style facility, which provides inmate labor to the main institution and to off-site work programs.

Ingram had requested that Cronin serve her time at the Alderson Federal Prison Camp in West Virginia.