US prison to release Tsagaris Thursday

By Ed Runyan | September 14, 2010 at 12:08a.m.

Former Trumbull County Commissioner James Tsagaris

By ED RUNYAN

WARREN

James Tsagaris, the former Trumbull County commissioner sent to federal prison for failing to report a loan from a local businessman, will be released Thursday.

Tsagaris, 76, of Howland, began serving a nine-month prison term at the Federal Correctional Institution in Morgantown, W. Va., on Dec. 18, 2009.

Tsagaris took a $36,551 loan that he never repaid from a local businessman in late 2004 while he was a commissioner without reporting it on state financial-disclosure forms in 2005 and 2006; he then voted on matters related to that businessman, federal prosecutors said.

Federal officials initially didn’t identify the local businessman. But early this year, U.S. Attorney Justin Roberts said Tsagaris’ crime was related to a similar one committed in summer 2006 by Maureen Cronin, a former Mahoning County Common Pleas Court judge.

Cronin took an $18,000 no-interest cash loan, with no collateral or payment schedule, from Flora Cafaro, part owner of the Cafaro Co., which had numerous civil lawsuits before Cronin while she was a judge.

Tsagaris and Cronin were both convicted of two counts of honest-services mail fraud.

Cronin, 57, of Youngstown, began serving a 27-month federal prison term March 24, 2010, in Greenville, Ill. and is scheduled to be released March 8, 2012. Cronin retired as common pleas judge in July 2007.

Roberts said Trumbull County didn’t lose any money as a result of Tsagaris’ crime, despite the “corrupting influence” it had.

U.S. District Court Judge Sara Lioi in Akron sentenced Tsagaris and Cronin. She sentenced Cronin in February 2010. She initially sentenced Tsagaris in August 2009 to one year of electronically monitored house arrest, three years’ probation and a $4,000 fine.

However, Tsagaris violated the terms of his house arrest by spending time in a McDonald’s restaurant and in a cigar store and by taking his sister to doctor’s appointments and to the grocery store. Those violations resulted in Judge Lioi ordering Tsagaris to prison in early December.

Tsagaris served two terms as county commissioner between 1998 and 2006.