Telemarketer sentenced to 15 months in prison

Associated Press

CLEVELAND

A federal judge sentenced a Northeast Ohio telemarketing millionaire to 15 months in prison Friday, telling him that his business success did not put him above the law.

A jury in Cleveland convicted 73-year-old Ben Suarez in June of witness tampering but acquitted him of illegal campaign contributions and other charges.

Suarez declined to comment after the sentencing. He will be allowed to report to prison on his own. One of his attorneys indicated an appeal was planned.

The charges concerned Suarez’s use of employees, relatives and others to funnel $100,000 to each of the 2012 campaigns of U.S. Rep. Jim Renacci and the failed U.S. Senate bid of Ohio Treasurer Josh Mandel for their help in fighting a California consumer practices complaint. Neither politician was accused of wrongdoing, and both campaigns returned the money after learning about an FBI investigation.

Suarez attorney Mark Schamel argued that Suarez did not try to obstruct justice, an element of the witness-tampering charge, when he sent his company’s controller a handwritten note telling her not to admit anything to her attorney. Suarez wrote the note, Schamel said, because another attorney had been hired for Barbara Housos.

Schamel said Suarez, a longtime contributor to conservative causes and Republican candidates, wrote angry letters about the investigation because he was “fighting a politically motivated and unethical attack” and that prosecutors acted “as if they were going after Pablo Escobar,” the brutal Colombian drug lord.

Suarez told Judge Patricia Gaughan that he wrote the note to Housos because he thought authorities “were trying to get her to admit to a crime she did not commit.”

“I truly apologize, but it wasn’t my intent in any way to obstruct justice,” Suarez told the judge.

Assistant U.S. prosecutor Carole Rendon countered that there was nothing political about the FBI’s investigation. She said they were just doing their jobs after learning about the campaign donations from an article in The (Toledo) Blade. Prosecutors had recommended a sentence of as long as eight years.

Schamel said sending Suarez to prison could imperil the future of Suarez Corp. Industries and the jobs of hundreds of employees. Rendon argued that Suarez should be treated like any other person found guilty of a crime. She also discounted Suarez’s attorneys’ request that Judge Gaughan show leniency because of Suarez’s age, saying white-collar criminals tend to be older.

Judge Gaughan called Suarez’s actions “an arrogant disregard for the rule of law,” and criticized him for his lack of remorse.

“A message must be sent to the public that money and power will not render anyone special treatment,” she said.