State will recoup more than $50 million

Prosecutors said Noe stole $13.7M from Ohio.

COLUMBUS (AP) — The sale of rare coins and other memorabilia should bring more than the $50 million the state gave a coin dealer convicted of stealing from the funds he managed for the workers’ compensation bureau, the broker handling the collection’s liquidation said Tuesday.

Tom Noe, a Republican fundraiser who was given the money in 1998 and 2001 to invest in the coins and other items, was convicted of theft and other crimes and sentenced in November to 18 years in prison.

So far, the state has recovered about $42 million through sales of the investments, said Bill Brandt, president and CEO of Chicago-based Development Specialists Inc. Nearly all the coins covered in Noe’s contracts have been sold, with the bulk of the rest being sports and historical memorabilia, Brandt said. Those should be liquidated by year’s end, he said.

“It is clear now we are going to retrieve more than $50 million. The question is how much,” Brandt said.

The state confirmed the total raised so far and it expects the sale of remaining assets to surpass $50 million as well, said Leo Jennings, a spokesman for Attorney General Marc Dann.

Prosecutors calculated Noe stole $13.7 million from the state. He has been ordered to repay that amount.

Besides his state conviction, Noe was given a three-year, three-month sentence in federal court for illegally funneling $45,000 in contributions to President Bush’s 2004 re-election campaign.

Noe was awarded the state contracts he held by the Ohio Bureau of Workers’ Compensation. The former chief financial officer of the bureau and an investment marketer also were sentenced in the scandal. Overall, the bureau has lost $300 million in investments since 1998.

The scandal investigation also uncovered free golf outings and other gifts that former Gov. Bob Taft failed to report on financial disclosure reports. He pleaded no contest to four ethics charges and was fined $4,000 in 2005.

The scandal played a key role in the election last year of Democrats to four of five statewide offices, including the governor’s office, which Republicans had held for 16 years.

The coins and other items were seized by authorities as part of the investigation of Noe. In 2005, then-Attorney General Jim Petro, a Republican, appointed former U.S. Bankruptcy Judge William Bodoh to oversee the liquidation. Dann, a Democrat, won election last November after Petro lost the GOP primary for governor.

The auction houses and other brokers usually get about 10 percent of the items they sell, Brandt said. About $2 million has gone to those brokers and lawyers handling the sales, he said. A variety of brokers, “right down even to eBay,” are moving the items, Brandt said.

Some of the money will go to Lucas and Franklin counties to cover the cost of prosecuting Noe and the rest goes back to the workers’ comp bureau, Brandt said. The attorney general’s office will determine how the money is split.