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Gains did not trigger probe
On the side
Local connection: Adam Fleischer, whose parents Margie (Melkle) and David Fleischer are Liberty High School graduates, is serving as Secretary of State Jon Husted’s Delaware County campaign chairman. He is the grandson of Tom and Avis Melkle of Liberty and Dr. Robert Fleischer of Warren. Adam is a junior at Ohio Wesleyan University and a trustee in Berlin Township in Delaware County.
Legislative program: Andrea Harless, a 2008 Springfield Local High School graduate, is among 24 participating in the 2015 Ohio Legislative Service Commission’s Legislative Fellowship Program. Harless will work with General Assembly members and participate in monthly seminars related to public policy. She has a master of public administration degree and a bachelor of arts degree in political science from Ohio University.
Democrats meet: The Mahoning Valley Democrat Club will meet at 7:30 p.m. Monday at the Roosevelt Park Community Room in Campbell. Democratic candidates on the ballot are invited to speak.
When Mahoning County Prosecutor Paul J. Gains contacted the Ohio Ethics Commission on Oct. 31, 2007, to investigate potential ethics violations over the relocation of the county Job and Family Services agency, he was two years late.
Based on a recent court notice filed in the new criminal conspiracy case, prosecutors had at least one confidential informant wearing a wire in an effort to get information on potential political corruption in the Mahoning Valley as early as Oct. 18, 2005.
Several defendants in the first trial — dismissed in July 2011 with prosecutors allowed to refile charges, which they did May 14 against Youngstown Mayor John A. McNally, Mahoning County Auditor Michael V. Sciortino and Atty. Martin Yavorcik — accused Gains of carrying out a vendetta by sending the letter that led to criminal indictments in July 2010.
An informant — called “Confidential Human Source 1” in the notice filed by Daniel Kasaris, a senior assistant Ohio attorney general and special prosecutor on this case — wore a wire more than 200 times between Oct. 18, 2005, and Aug. 6, 2010.
The recordings were made at numerous Mahoning County [and some Trumbull County] bars, restaurants, offices, government buildings and in vehicles.
The informant also taped more than 80 telephone calls between Sept. 22, 2008, and Oct. 1, 2009.
It sounds like a full-time job.
Also, “Confidential Human Source 3” made 31 recordings of phone conversations and in-person talks regarding Richard Goldberg, a felon and former lawyer who is accused of being mixed up in this, based on court filings.
I met Goldberg once in my life. Years ago, I was walking into the former Anthony’s on the River restaurant in downtown Youngstown, and he was leaving with the late Don L. Hanni Jr. and Anthony Cafaro Sr., believed to be “Businessman 1” in the indictment.
The recent filing listed Hanni’s law office as the location of a taped conversation on Oct. 11, 2007, with the first informant, Goldberg and Yavorcik.
The AG’s office and the Cuyahoga County Prosecutor’s Office indicted McNally, in his capacity as county commissioner, Sciortino and Yavorcik on 83 criminal counts including engaging in a pattern of corrupt activity, conspiracy, bribery, perjury, money laundering and tampering with records.
The three have pleaded not guilty.
The indictment contends McNally, Sciortino and Yavorcik, along with others, were part of a criminal enterprise that conspired to keep the Mahoning County Job and Family Services department at Cafaro’s Garland Plaza on Youngstown’s East Side.
The charges against the three, Cafaro and others were dismissed in July 2011 when special prosecutors from the Ohio Ethics Commission and the Lorain County Prosecutor’s Office said they couldn’t proceed.
That was because, they said, the FBI possessed 2,000 hours of recordings from at least one defendant in the case, and the feds weren’t willing to turn them over.
That obviously isn’t the case now.
Kasaris wrote in his filing that prosecutors have about 700 hours of secretly recorded conversations they may use as evidence in this case. The state already gave the defendants’ attorneys 576 hours of tapes.
In the recent filing, Kasaris specifically wrote: “There are not, nor does the state possess, 2,000 hours of recordings.”