Remember “John Doe #2,” the unnamed defendant at the center of a civil lawsuit alleging a pay-to-pay scheme involving the Richardson administration? We’re apparently going to learn his identity on Tuesday.
The man is alleged by Frank Foy, the former chief investment officer for the New Mexico Educational Retirement Board, to have ordered other state officials to make investments with Vanderbilt Financial and affiliated companies in exchange for a little more than $15,000 in contributions to Gov. Bill Richardson’s 2008 presidential campaign. Frank Foy’s lawsuit alleges that the state lost $90 million in the investment deals.
You can read the lawsuit by clicking here.
John Doe #2’s identity has remained sealed, but Foy’s attorney, Victor Marshall of Albuquerque, wrote today in an e-mail to reporters that he plans to unseal the man’s identity on Tuesday at an 11:30 a.m. news conference in Albuquerque, “barring unforeseen developments.”
To have the influence to do what Foy alleges, the man is likely a high-ranking official in Richardson’s inner circle, or possibly even Richardson himself.
State officials who have been publicly named as defendants are State Investment Officer Gary Bland and Bruce Malott, chairman of the educational retirement board, and those are the men Foy says John Doe #2 instructed to make the investments. Several companies and officials tied to those companies have also been named as defendants.
But dozens of defendants’ names remained sealed, including someone listed as John Doe #1.