November 3, 2009 – The attorney who represented former Marina City resident Gary Kimmel says he believes the convicted money launderer will be released from prison next year and wants to return to Chicago.

“I think he’d stay in Chicago,” says Joseph Lopez. “He wants to get out and be a dentist again. And he can if he pays a $50,000 fine, he gets his license back.”

The 60-year-old Kimmel is about eight months into what was originally a 37-month sentence. But Lopez says he only has to serve 85 percent of that time to qualify for early release. On top of that, if Kimmel completes a drug and alcohol counseling program, he gets 12 months taken off his sentence.

That could reduce his sentence to 19 months, meaning he’d be released around September 2010. According to the Bureau of Prisons, his official release date is November 28, 2010.

After Kimmel was indicted on January 18, 2006, the Illinois Department of Financial and Professional Regulation ordered that he immediately stop his dental practice. In June 2006, they indefinitely suspended Kimmel’s dentist license and fined him $50,000 for providing dental services to prostitutes on behalf of their pimps, assisting in the operation of an interstate prostitution ring from his dental office, billing for services not rendered, patient abandonment, failure to properly diagnose and treat periodontal disease, and advertising violations.

On July 6, 2009, Kimmel was moved from the United States Penitentiary in Marion, Illinois, to USP Leavenworth, a former maximum security prison located 25 miles north of Kansas City. Kimmel is in an adjacent satellite prison camp that houses about 390 minimum-security offenders.

The Leavenworth camp offers the federal prison system’s Residential Drug Abuse Program, which USP Marion did not. Former NFL player Michael Vick was in the drug program when he was serving time on a federal dog fighting conviction.

In March 2008, ESPN described RDAP as 500 hours of classes, counseling, group therapy, and occasional drug tests over a period of nine months, an average of 14 hours of classes per week. After satisfying program requirements, Kimmel would be eligible for early release into a community corrections center or “halfway house.”

(Above) Attorney Joseph Lopez presents his closing argument in defense of accused murderer Drew Peterson at a May 28 mock trial sponsored by WGN Radio. The jury had a half-hour to deliberate but did not return a unanimous verdict, splitting its vote 6-6. In January, Lopez represented alleged mob hit man Frank Calabrese Sr., who was sentenced to life in prison.

Lopez says he last heard from Kimmel about two months ago. “He’s doing good. He was happy he got in the drug and alcohol program. He thanked me for that.”

With his wife living with her mother in the Philippines along with the couple’s three children, Kimmel, says Lopez, “would just sit in his house and drink by himself.”

He got Kimmel into RDAP after he was sentenced, “which never happens. I had to go through hoops to get that.”

 Related story: Condo association takes possession of Kimmel units