Keep $1.3 million thief locked up, prosecutor urges

Scott Adair plundered a trucking company “to satisfy his personal greed,” prosecutor says, urging a judge to keep Adair in prison.

YOUNGSTOWN

An assistant county prosecutor is opposing the early release from prison of a man who stole $1.3 million from a trucking company he co-founded.

Kenneth J. Cardinal filed his motion Friday in opposition to judicial release for Scott Adair, 53, who pleaded guilty to embezzling from Southwind Transportation Inc. and was sentenced to four years in prison in August 2011.

Judge Lou A. D’Apolito of Mahoning County Common Pleas Court, who imposed the sentence, has not yet ruled on Adair’s motion for judicial release or scheduled a hearing on the matter.

Adair’s criminal acts caused the bankruptcy and financial collapse of the company and unemployment for its workers, Cardinal said, adding that a company co-owner is paying $3,000 per month to a bankruptcy trustee for guaranteed loans he and Adair co-signed.

Cardinal also said Adair “plundered a company to satisfy his personal greed,” and that the company’s collapse was a “disaster to local vendors who lost tens of thousands of dollars in the bankruptcy caused by the pure greed of the defendant.”

Adair, who is at the Marion Correctional Institution, pleaded guilty to aggravated grand theft, tampering with records, complicity to theft and two counts each of telecommunications fraud and money-laundering.