Ex-JFS director admits drug use

Tom Mahoney said he has been battling depression most of his life.

STAFF REPORT

WARREN — A former Trumbull County official admitted he used cocaine while on probation.

Tom Mahoney was fired in March from his job as director of the Trumbull County Department of Job and Family Services over his connection to a man suspected of being a drug dealer.

The cocaine use showed up in a urine test required by his probation officer with the county’s Adult Probation Department. The department filed the probation-violation charge against him earlier this month.

Judge John M. Stuard of common pleas court granted Mahoney on June 19 the chance to receive treatment for his drug addiction instead of being sentenced for possessing cocaine, but that option is revoked by Mahoney’s violating his probation.

He will now have a felony criminal record and will be sentenced to either probation or up to one year in jail.

His sentencing is set for Oct. 8.

In speaking to Judge Stuard, Mahoney, 55, of Oakwood Street, Girard, apologized at a hearing Thursday and said he has battled depression most of his life. He said the event that triggered his cocaine use was being turned down for a job.

Mahoney’s attorney, Michael Bowler of Akron, said that Mahoney was in a “tailspin of depression” at the time of the probation violation.

The Trumbull Ashtabula Group Law Enforcement Task Force discovered evidence that Kenneth Greep, 46, of Pleasant Valley Road, Niles, was selling drugs out of his house. Further investigation, including taped conversations between Greep and Mahoney, indicated that Mahoney was buying drugs from Greep.

County commissioners fired Mahoney from the JFS director’s job, which paid $107,344, on March 23, a short time after Greep was arrested at the JFS offices, where he worked as a temporary employee. JFS was formerly known as the welfare department.

Four counts of cocaine trafficking are pending against Greep in common pleas court.