GARY | A weekend auction of the former Gary Urban Enterprise Association's assets brought in $103,000, state officials said Monday.

Staci Schneider, a spokeswoman for the Indiana attorney general's office, said the money will be deposited in a public charitable trust created last month.

The auction proceeds will be combined with other GUEA assets, including the sale, later this year, of hundreds of real estate parcels the GUEA held. It all will become seed money for a new organization called the Emerson Neighborhood Residents Council, a nonprofit group whose leaders will be drawn from the area, officials said.

"Recouping funds and reinvesting in the community is the goal of activities now related to GUEA," Attorney General Steve Carter said. "The proceeds from this auction will do just that."

Some 500 packed the former Urban Career Institute, the site of the GUEA-held trade school in Gary's Miller section, Saturday to bid on the items the attorney general's office seized as part of the defunct group's assets in 2005.

GUEA was created in 1985 for the purpose of buying and improving land in Gary's poorest neighborhoods under a state law permitting city businesses to reduce taxes by donating more than $15 million to the nonprofit association between 2000 and 2003.

GUEA's downfall followed a series of stories by The Times exposing the questionable spending practices by Jojuana Meeks, then GUEA's executive director, who lived rent and tax free in a renovated home, drove luxury cars and packed the charity's payroll with family members.

Meeks and three other former GUEA executives and board members pleaded guilty to criminal charges earlier this year in connection with the scheme.

Items sold at auction included four vans and a pickup truck, thousands of trade school tools, building and construction items, restaurant equipment and office furniture.