Steve Bachar listens as his attorney, Robert Swestka, speaks during a hearing in Denver District Court on Friday, March 10, 2023. (BusinessDen file)
Steve Bachar, a former White House staffer and lawyer turned businessman, has died at the Rifle Correctional Center, where he was serving a three-year sentence for theft.
A spokesperson for the Colorado Department of Corrections confirmed Bachar’s death late Friday afternoon but declined to say when or how the inmate’s death had occurred.
Bachar, 58, was sentenced to prison Nov. 6 for stealing from a North Carolina man named Jamie Lindsay. Bachar had talked Lindsay into investing $125,000 in Bachar’s company, Empowerment Capital, by misrepresenting the risks associated with that investment, then spent most of Lindsay’s money on personal expenses, as Bachar admitted last year.
“Nothing is an excuse for my actions. I blame no one else and take full responsibility,” Bachar said at his sentencing hearing, calling himself “deeply remorseful.”
“I have experienced public shame and humiliation, which I believe was deserved,” he said.
Prosecutors initially sought to have Bachar sentenced to probation rather than prison but Judge Eric Johnson rejected their plea agreement, calling it “contrary to justice.” A new plea agreement was drawn up that called for Bachar to be sentenced to two years in prison but left the decision to Johnson, who instead handed down a sentence of three years.
“The damage wrought by these white-collar crimes gets lost in our society, with our focus on the war on drugs, with our focus on street crime,” he said, calling Bachar a “corporate thief.”
Steve Bachar, 58, was an inmate at the Rifle Correctional Center. (Colorado Department of Corrections)
Bachar tried to appeal that sentence on Jan. 29. Writing from the Rifle Correctional Center, he asked the Colorado Court of Appeals to let him file an appeal well after a Dec. 26 deadline to do so had passed. The court denied his request March 7, a week before his death.
Bachar’s first scheduled parole hearing was set for November and he would have been eligible for parole the following February. His mandatory release date was Aug. 9, 2026.
It had been a far fall from grace for Bachar, who graduated from Emory University and Georgetown Law before opening a political consulting shop in Washington in 1987. There he came to know an ambitious governor from Arkansas and joined his campaign for president in 1992. When Bill Clinton won, Bachar joined the White House as an advance man.
“Once he’s on the ground, I am essentially joined at the hip to (Clinton),” he explained then.
After some time in the U.S. Treasury Department, he worked on John Hickenlooper’s first campaign for governor and served on his transition team. He later joined Moye White, the Denver law firm, as a partner in 2015. When it hired Bachar, the firm called him “one of Colorado’s preeminent public policy attorneys and a respected adviser.” He left Moye White in 2017.
But Bachar’s business pursuits were less successful and would lead to his downfall.
Empowerment Capital bought Revolar, a company that made panic buttons. Initially a local tech darling, Revolar was forced into bankruptcy in 2018. By the next year, Bachar was being sued by the state for back taxes and his condo in Denver was being foreclosed on.
In 2020, Bachar was accused by Future Health Co., a California company, of stealing millions of dollars while working as a middleman between Future Health and the State of Wisconsin to supply medical gowns during the pandemic. The next year, Future Health won a $3.8 million court judgment against Bachar. That money has never been paid.
Then came other lawsuits and court judgments, until Bachar owed more than $5 million. He was disbarred in 2022 for ignoring the court judgments against him and was “living hand to mouth” in Crested Butte at the time of his sentencing, Bachar said in November.
Editor’s note: This story has been updated to note when Bachar left Moye White.
