The wife of former New York Rep. Stephen Solarz, Nina Solarz, was fined $5,300 and sentenced Friday to a year's probation for her role in the House banking scandal.
"I am very sorry for what I've done," Nina Solarz, 63, tearfully told U.S. District Judge Stanley Harris. "I've been ashamed. I've been embarrassed. I will never do anything like that again."Her husband, a Democrat who was defeated for re-election in 1992 after 18 years in Congress, won't be charged in this case, the Justice Department said. He had a huge number of overdrafts from the House Bank but was reportedly cleared by the department's House Bank task force long ago.
Nina Solarz pleaded guilty earlier this year to two misdemeanors - ordering a bad check written on her husband's House Bank account and taking $7,500 from a charity she headed. She had faced up to a year and three months behind bars and a $25,000 fine.
The case was the 11th criminal case filed by the task force, which is probing a 1992 scandal involving massive overdrafts at the now-defunct bank for House members and employees.
"I don't know when I've had a more enigmatic situation with which to deal," Judge Harris told Nina Solarz. The judge said he was impressed with her history of community service, but baffled by her apparent inability to resist writing rubber checks.
Nina Solarz said an accountant now handles the family's finances and she no longer writes checks.
Prosecutors had charged her with a federal misdemeanor for ordering one of her husband's employees to write a $5,200 check on her husband's House Bank account on Nov. 21, 1990. When the check reached the bank for payment, the Solarz account was overdrawn by $10,000.