Bill Morlin

A woman who fraudulently received more than $44,000 from eager parents-to-be will spend two years in federal prison for using the Internet in an infant adoption and surrogacy scheme called "Dream Makers." Joella Kern posted pictures of babies on her Internet site, which claimed its purpose was "bringing families together."

Spokane Mayor Jim West voiced strong opposition to a gay business district proposed for Spokane, according to e-mails released Wednesday in the ongoing abuse of power controversy at City Hall. "We don't support this and have nothing to do with it," West said in an April 27 e-mail to Everette Elliot Webb, a British Petroleum worker who said he moved his family to Spokane from Alaska in 1989.

A man who has spent a good share of his life stealing and selling expensive motor homes throughout the United States is going for another ride – this time to federal prison for more than five years. Ronald Bruce Myers, 46, was sentenced in U.S. District Court in Spokane on Tuesday to 66 months in prison for stealing a $360,000 motor home he attempted to sell last summer to a dealer in Spokane Valley.

Spokane Mayor Jim West, ignoring calls from the business community to allow an immediate recall election, said Monday he will challenge a judge's ruling that there is sufficient evidence for a vote. West's decision to file an appeal puts the question of a recall election before the Washington state Supreme Court. The state's highest court is scheduled to take its summer recess beginning this weekend and not return to hear cases until Sept. 13.

Individual investors battling drag strip king Orville Moe won a significant victory this week when a Superior Court judge ordered appointment of a receiver to supervise financial operations at Spokane Raceway Park. Attorney Barry Davidson, who has handled several high-profile bankruptcy cases and receiverships, was named Wednesday by Judge Robert Austin to immediately assume control of the raceway's operations.

A panel appointed to investigate Spokane Mayor Jim West will hold its second meeting Friday, and it will be open to the public, a city official announced Wednesday. The decision reverses an earlier plan for the five-member panel to meet secretly to discuss whether West violated city policies or laws by offering internships and appointments to young gay men he met online.

A stream of e-mails – many angry and vulgar, some supportive – poured into City Hall from around the nation in early May after The Spokesman-Review published stories about Mayor Jim West's dual life as an anti-gay politician who offered jobs and other perks in exchange for sexual favors to young men he met on the Internet. The media got a first look at the vociferous reaction on Tuesday, when city attorneys released some of West's e-mails in response to the newspaper's May 6 public records request.

Two City Council members on Tuesday questioned the legality of an independent commission appointed to investigate the activities of Spokane Mayor Jim West. Council members Bob Apple and Cherie Rodgers criticized the commission when they were asked about a possible conflict of interest involving member Philip J. Thompson, a retired judge.

The FBI is in the initial phases of a "public corruption" investigation into allegations Spokane Mayor Jim West abused his office by offering jobs to young men he hoped to entice into sexual relationships, a senior Justice Department official said Tuesday. FBI agents today are expected to interview Ryan Oelrich and another man, both 24, who said they were independently offered a position on the Human Rights Commission and City Hall jobs after online chats with a man who turned out to be West.

Mayor Jim West ended two days of public silence on Sunday in a rambling, sometimes emotional 30-minute conversation over an expanding controversy linking his sexual activities and the trappings of his public office. West responded quickly to The Spokesman-Review's front-page story on Sunday that revealed new details about his activities, calling the newspaper's editor at 6:37 a.m. to deny the new allegations and offer responses to several elements of the newspaper's investigation.

Spokane Mayor Jim West confided to a city councilwoman Thursday that he masturbated in his City Hall office during an online chat on a gay Web site. "He wanted to kind of bare his soul … He wanted to give me a heads-up," City Councilwoman Cherie Rodgers said Saturday in describing a conversation she had with West.

The controversy swirling around Spokane Mayor Jim West grew substantially Friday when two men, now living in Seattle, came forward with new allegations about his conduct in 1980 and as recently as 2001. West faces 24-year-old allegations of sexual abuse of children and more recent allegations of abuse of public power.

The last time Robert Galliher talked publicly about being abused as a boy by a sheriff's deputy he says he ended up with a black eye, bruised ribs and blood in his urine. Galliher claims he was beaten by correctional officers in the Spokane County Jail in 2003, about three months after he was quoted in The Spokesman-Review. In that newspaper story, Galliher said he and his older brother Brett were sexually abused in the late 1970s by Spokane County Sheriff's Deputy David Hahn.

Spokane Mayor Jim West, facing accusations of using positions of public trust to develop sexual relations with young men, resigned Thursday from the executive board of the Inland Northwest Council of the Boy Scouts. The 54-year-old mayor, who faces allegations he abused two young boys in the late 1970s, also is expected to resign today from the Morning Star Boy's Ranch board of directors.

For a quarter century, the man who is now Spokane's mayor has used positions of public trust – as a sheriff's deputy, Boy Scout leader and powerful politician – to develop sexual relationships with boys and young men. One man, Robert J. Galliher, claims in a court deposition that Jim West molested him in the mid-1970s when he was a boy and West was a Spokane County sheriff's deputy and Boy Scout leader.

The accountant for Spokane Raceway Park testified Monday that he has never been asked to conduct a full-blown audit by Orville Moe, the facility's embattled general partner now accused of fraud and tax evasion. Such an audit would be almost impossible because the financial history of the drag strip and oval track in Airway Heights stretches back 30 years, accountant Larry Wyatt testified.