Official: Resume civil lawsuit against Noe

COLUMBUS (AP) -- Ohio's attorney general asked a judge to restart a civil lawsuit against a former GOP fundraiser convicted of stealing from a state investment.
The lawsuit against Tom Noe, a politically connected coin dealer, seeks to recover at least 4 million that Attorney General Jim Petro says Noe took from the Ohio Bureau of Workers' Compensation's investment for personal use.
The civil suit, filed in May 2005 in Franklin County Common Pleas Court, was put on hold six months later as the criminal investigation unfolded. Noe was convicted on charges of theft, corrupt activity, money laundering, forgery and tampering with records and was sentenced Monday to 18 years in prison.
"We are still looking to recover every penny he took from the bureau as well as the reasonable return the injured workers of Ohio should have seen on the bureau's investments he mismanaged," Petro said in a statement Tuesday.
Petro's motion asks Franklin County Common Pleas Court Judge David Cain to lift the stay he placed on the civil lawsuit.