The former head of the State Excise Police has pleaded guilty to charges of accepting sex, drinks, and dinners from the owner of two Indianapolis strip clubs.
Prosecutors tell the Associated Press Gene Honeycutt was booked Feb. 3, in a deal by which he agreed to plead guilty to a felony ghost employment count and a misdemeanor count of official misconduct. And it doesn't get any more official than this: Honeycutt had been the man who enforced Indiana liquor laws until he resigned last October.
He could get up to three years in prison and a $10,000 fine on the ghost employment charge if a judge accepts the plea, the AP says. He could also get a year behind bars and a $5,000 fine on the misconduct charge.
Prosecutors say an ongoing investigation discovered Honeycutt, in effect, created a group within the State Excise Police for after-hours carousing at topless bars. Honeycutt, 47, committed ghost employment when he encouraged on-duty members of the Special Investigations Unit he formed early last year to accompany him to two strip clubs for socializing, drinks, dinner and sex with the club's female employees, one prosecutor tells the AP.
``In short, they were not being paid by the taxpayers to have private booze and sex parties with strippers on the taxpayer's time and the bar owner's dime,'' prosecutor Scott Newman tells the AP.
Honeycutt insists in a statement that he and his staff never gave any specific bar owner any special treatment.
