HAMMOND | Former Calumet Township Trustee Dozier Allen Jr., who served more than 30 years in office, was indicted Thursday.

Federal officials contend he took $28,000 in 2002 from a federal grant intended to help move welfare recipients into the work force.

Allen, 75, was indicted by a federal grand jury along with three of his former senior employees: Deputy Trustee Wanda Joshua, 59; Ann Marie Karras, 65; and Albert Young Jr., 59.

Each was charged with one count of mail fraud and honest services fraud. The indictment says the four took a total of $143,000 for themselves, on top of their normal pay, between 2000 and 2002.

"This indictment is yet another sad example of what is too commonplace in Lake County, Indiana, and that is self-dealing" by elected officials collecting secret payments on top of their normal salaries, Acting U.S. Attorney David Capp said.

Allen's defense attorney Fred Work, who had to step away from a different federal fraud trial Thursday to appear at Allen's initial hearing, said Allen will fight the charges.

"The charges are baseless. I don't think there's any fraud at all," Work said.

The eight-term trustee was released on $20,000 unsecured bond Thursday and will plead not guilty next month. The other three defendants did not have initial hearings Thursday.

The grant that the four officials are accused of stealing from was part of a national effort through the U.S. Department of Labor that began in the 1990s to move welfare recipients off the public dole and into productive jobs.

As the local agency receiving the federal grants, Ivy Tech Community College's Workforce Development Services office struck a contract with the Calumet Township trustee's office in November 2000 to have the township begin providing information on what money it was spending on "welfare-to-work" efforts.

Federal authorities say Allen's employees began paying themselves out of the contract almost immediately, collecting monthly checks starting in December 2000.

Township Trustee Mary Elgin, who defeated Allen in 2002, publicly disclosed the questionable payments in a 2006 article in The Times, reporting that the U.S. Department of Labor was investigating the checks.

Allen, whose regular township salary was $88,000, has not disputed the payments he and the workers received, most for $1,000. But he said the payments were approved by the Township Board and disclosed to the State Board of Accounts.

"It was done with the permission of the governing body," Allen told The Times in 2006. "It was not an exceptional procedure."