Cedar County woman sentenced for attempt to extort money from Iowans for Tax Relief

A Cedar County woman charged with attempting to extort $1 million from an Iowa taxpayers' group has been given a suspended sentence and placed on probation.

Mary Kathryn Moravek of Mechanicsville was given a suspended sentence of not more than five years by a Muscatine County District Court judge. She also was placed on supervised probation for three years, according to Assistant Muscatine County Attorney Alan Ostergren. Extortion is a Class D felony punishable by up to five years in prison and a $7,500 fine.

Moravek, 51, was charged with attempting to extort $1 million from Iowans for Tax Relief last fall. She claimed to have witnessed illegal campaign contributions being made by an ITR employee over a period of at least five years. She said a lobbyist for ITR was reimbursed by the group for checks he wrote to state and municipal political candidates.

ITR denied any wrongdoing.

Moravek, who was a lobbyist for the Iowa Commission for People with Disabilities at the time of the incident, was taken into custody when she met with a representative of ITR and an undercover Muscatine County Sheriff's deputy who she thought was delivering a $30,000 payment from the group and its co-founder, David Stanley, in exchange for her silence.

Prior to her meeting with the deputy, Moravek told The Gazette she planned to lodge an ethics complaint against ITR and its lobbyist, Cloyd “Robbie” Robinson of Cedar Rapids.

She called The Gazette a second time that same day to say she was no longer interested in publicizing her claims because Stanley had agreed to a “sizable” cash settlement.