Tom Noe is moved to federal prison in Atlanta

5/10/2007

Tom Noe, federal inmate no. 26157-018, is on the move again.

Noe's wife, Bernadette, said in an e-mail this morning her husband has been transferred from the federal prison in Edgefield, S.C. to the U.S. Penitentiary in Atlanta.

'Even though he says in Atlanta the rats are as big as cats, they slide under their doors in the middle of the night, he much preferred Atlanta to the 'hole' in Edgefield,'' Ms. Noe said in an e-mail.

Noe's stay in Atlanta is expected to be temporary, as his final destination for his 27-month federal sentence is the federal prison in Coleman, Fla., about 50 miles northwest of Orlando, FL., Ms. Noe said. He was sentenced to prison after being convicted last year of illegally funneling more than $45,000 to President Bush's re-election campaign.

Ms. Noe said her husband was placed in solitary confinement in Edgefield, apparently because his designation is being changed from minimum to low or medium-security. Former prisoners say that is a routine step when the federal Bureau of Prisons recalculate the points that determine where an inmate is housed.

Noe was being held in a minimum-security camp on the grounds of the medium-security prison near the George-South Carolina line, where Ms. Noe and their children recently visited him.

Noe, a former Toledo-area coin dealer, past chairman of the Lucas County Republican Party, and a Bush Pioneer for raising more than $100,000 for President Bush's re-election, has been sentenced to serve 18 years in an Ohio prison on his conviction for stealing millions of dollars from the coin funds he managed for the Ohio Bureau of Workers' Compensation. He has filed a notice of appeal.