Oklahoma Commissioner Charged in Corruption Scheme

AP Wire Service

Innocent pleas were entered recently for Oklahoma’s insurance commissioner on felony charges of mismanaging two funds—one set up to provide continuing education for insurance agents and one established to buy shoes for poor children.

Carroll Fisher, 64, appeared before District Judge Susan Caswell for a plea hearing on four felony counts, including failure to register a nonexempt charitable organization and failure to report contributions to a non-exempt charitable organization. She entered the innocent pleas for Fisher. Fisher’s assistant, Opal Ellis, who is charged with six counts, including embezzlement, pleaded innocent Feb. 17. Fisher and Ellis are free on $1,000 bail each.

Irven Box, Fisher’s attorney, filed motions arguing that the multicounty grand jury, which indicted Fisher and Ellis, does not have proper jurisdiction. He also accused Assistant Attorney General Joellyn McCormick of making improper statements to the media about Fisher’s guilt and said the attorney general’s office should therefore be removed from the case.

Box gave the court a tape of a news interview containing McCormick’s statements. He said these statements included McCormick’s personal opinions about Fisher and were therefore inappropriate. Box later said he did not know who would prosecute the case if the motion to remove the attorney general is granted. “I think it would be up to the Supreme Court to decide,” he said.

Caswell scheduled an early March hearing to consider the motions.

Fisher could face up to 26 years in prison if convicted. Ellis faces six felony counts and up to 66 years if convicted. McCormick has alleged that Fisher and Ellis engaged in a pattern of corruption since Fisher took office in 1998.

She said that Fisher’s defense is trying to divert attention from evidence in the indictments against Fisher. According to an indictment unsealed Feb. 17, the pair failed to turn over to the state treasurer money collected from the insurance industry between April 1999 and March 2003 for a state continuing education fund.

The defendants transferred the money “to a separate, private account to which only they had access,” Attorney General Drew Edmondson said. McCormick said more than $40,000 was collected.

The indictment also accused Fisher, Ellis and the Fisher Foundation, the organization formed to buy shoes for poor children, of failing to register as a charitable organization, report contributions or keep receipts. No expenditures have been made from the fund to buy shoes.

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Topics Oklahoma