and in a stroke of luck last year, the case was transferred to chicago. in a court hearing last march, he said he would drop the charges if he held up his part of the deal comes a deferred prosecution much like u.s. attorneys in chicago gave to actor jesse a small ad for his alleged hate crime post. but when shock struck a deal he made tens of thousands of dollars reselling world series and super bowl tickets and admitted overbilling the house of representatives for mileage he never drove and admitted failing to declare income for the irs. but he still says he committed no crimes. is a difference between mistakes and crimes and exit from the beginning that there was never an intent by me or my staff to commit crimes. now that he has paid back $60,000 to his congressional
with dateline. they shared with us how this whole murder-for-hire plot got started. for ira it was out of desperation. things had reached a horrible point. reporter: ira had a secret. he d been stealing from an insurance company, overbilling for medical services. and he says his wife susan knew it. did you feel like susan was trying to blackmail you in any way? she was trying to blackmail me in every way. she would look at me and she would say, listen, i have broken into your e-mails. i have printed out and recorded all of your business dealings, and i m telling you now if you don t give me everything i want, i m going to the prosecutor and i m going to expose you for everything and try to put you in jail. reporter: remember, ira recorded susan threatening him. don t bother coming back! you re going to [ bleep ] jail and [ bleep ] court! reporter: ira claims susan was using that information to pressure him into signing a post-nuptial agreement that stated if they divorced
a psychology intern when she heard the news. tears started coming out of my eyes and i didn t know if they were tears of joy or tears of sadness. i couldn t even identify what my emotions were. out in california, shawn barnes, a college student, was heading home for the holidays when her aunt called to tell her. i got that news, and you have all this time to think going across the country. and it was just like the strangest christmas present i ever could have imagined. shawn s mother phyllis barnes, remember, had been a patient of weinberger s and filed the first malpractice suit against him. i wasn t sure at first if it was a good or bad thing or what. by february 2010, arrangements for weinberger s extradition had been completed and he was back in the united states and facing a world of legal trouble. first, there was a 22-count criminal insurance fraud indictment charging him with billing surgeries he didn t do and overbilling for those he did do. then hundreds of former
eric s best friend. and kobe backed up eric. they had a terrific marriage and there was no problems whatsoever. reporter: but if the marriage seemed solid, there were questions about pegye. at least according to linda bechler, eric s mother. linda says pegye told her something in confidence just before she disappeared. she stopped me on the stairway as i was leaving and said, came up and said i have to talk to you. she said i m afraid i m going to jail. reporter: according to court documents, about a year before pegye disappeared, the couple sold their physical therapy business to another company but they stayed on as employees. then just four months before pegye vanished, the bechlers were fired amid allegations they had overbilled medicare for over $1 million. so when linda heard pegye had vanished i started thinking about how disturbed she was about going to jail. was pegye bechler capable of committing white collar crime? medicare overbilling? in my opinion, no. rep
for ira it was out of desperation. things had reached a horrible point. reporter: ira had a secret. he d been stealing from an insurance company, overbilling for medical services. and he says his wife susan knew it. did you feel like susan was trying to blackmail you in any way? she was trying to blackmail me in every way. she would look at me and she would say, listen, i have broken into your e-mails. i have printed out and recorded all of your business dealings, and i m telling you now if you don t give me everything i want, i m going to the prosecutor and i m going to expose you for everything and try to put you in jail. reporter: remember, ira recorded susan threatening him. don t bother coming back! you re going to [ bleep ] jail and [ bleep ] court! reporter: ira claims susan was using that information to pressure him into signing a post-nuptial agreement that stated if they divorced he would give her most of their assets. fearing susan would make good on her threats,