SCRANTON — Two Pennsylvania judges charged with taking more than $2 million in kickbacks to send youth offenders to privately run detention centers pleaded guilty to fraud Thursday in one of the most stunning cases of judicial corruption on record.

Prosecutors allege Luzerne County Judges Mark Ciavarella and Michael Conahan took $2.6 million in payoffs to put juvenile offenders in lockups run by Western PA Child Care in Allegheny Township, Butler County, and PA Child Care in Luzerne County, possibly tainting the convictions of thousands of juvenile offenders.

The judges pleaded guilty in federal court in Scranton to honest services fraud and tax fraud. Their plea agreements call for sentences of more than seven years in prison. They are permitted to remain free pending sentencing.

The gray-haired jurists said little at Thursday's hearing and declined to comment afterward.

Prosecutors described a scheme in which Conahan, the former president judge of Luzerne County, shut down the Luzerne County-owned juvenile detention center in 2002 and signed an agreement with PA Child Care to send youth offenders to its new facility outside Wilkes-Barre.

Ciavarella, who presided over juvenile court, sent youths to the detention center while he was taking payments, prosecutors said.

For years, youth advocacy groups complained that Ciavarella was overly harsh and ran roughshod over youngsters' constitutional rights. Ciavarella sent a quarter of his juvenile defendants to detention centers from 2002 to 2006, compared with a statewide rate of one in 10.

Ciavarella has specifically denied sending children to jail for cash and indicated he would not go through with the guilty plea if the government offered that as evidence.

Thus prosecutors Thursday skirted over many of the allegations contained in their original criminal complaint, presenting only enough evidence to establish that crimes had occurred.

But Assistant U.S. Attorney Gordon Zubrod said after the hearing that the government continues to allege a quid pro quo.