Leavenworth prison guard Michael Harston accused of accepting bribes for tobacco

A prison guard was indicted on bribery charges Wednesday for allegedly smuggling tobacco to inmates at a federal prison in Leavenworth.

Michael Harston, 52, was charged in U.S. District Court in Kansas City with one count of conspiracy to commit bribery and four counts of accepting bribes.

According to federal prosecutors, Harston took bribes between October 2013 and August 2014 in exchange for carrying contraband tobacco into the United States Penitentiary in Leavenworth.

Harston, a resident of Kansas City, Mo., received payments from the relatives of inmates through wire transfers, U.S. Attorney Barry Grissom’s office alleges, and was caught on video surveillance distributing tobacco to inmates.

The Federal Bureau of Investigation investigated the alleged bribery, Grissom’s office said.

Harston faces a maximum sentence of five years in federal prison and a fine of $250,000 on the conspiracy charge and up to 15 years in prison and fine of $250,000 on each of the four bribery counts.

Built in 1903, United States Penitentiary in Leavenworth was the nation’s largest maximum-security federal prison before being downgraded to a medium-security prison in 2005. The all-male prison houses 1,919 prisoners.

Seven employees of the historic Leavenworth prison have been killed since the prison opened. Its long list of notorious inmates includes Martin Luther King Jr. assassin James Earl Ray, serial killer Carl Panzram, gangster George “Machine Gun” Kelly and professional quarterback Michael Vick.