Records on Oakhill move costs will be used as evidence

CLEVELAND — Prosecutors in the Oakhill Renaissance Place criminal conspiracy case plan to use records pertaining to the cost of moving the Mahoning County Job and Family Services department to that location and a recent videotaped interview county Auditor Michael V. Sciortino, one of three defendants, did with The Vindicator as evidence.

Daniel Kasaris, a senior assistant Ohio attorney general and this case’s special prosecutor, wrote in a court filing that the state turned over that evidence and more to Sciortino and the two other defendants: Youngstown Mayor John A. McNally and attorney Martin Yavorcik.

The other evidence includes “arrangements that the government had made with three witnesses,” “interviews conducted with additional witnesses,” and a “request for production of documents made by parties” in the lawsuit filed by a Cafaro Co. subsidiary against Mahoning County commissioners in 2006.

McNally, Sciortino and Yavorcik were indicted in May 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 and insist they’ve done nothing illegal.

The indictment contends McNally and Sciortino, both Democrats, and Yavorcik, an independent, along with others, conspired to keep Job and Family Services at the Cafaro Co.-owned Garland Plaza on Youngstown’s East Side. JFS moved to Oakhill.

Prosecutors last week said they had about 700 hours of secretly recorded conversations made by confidential sources over a five-year period it may use as evidence.

The latest filing said the state is processing about 30 recordings made by a confidential source, and will provide summaries of those recordings when they are done.

For the complete story, read Tuesday’s Vindicator and Vindy.com