Tech items confiscated in dual searches of Sciortino offices, home today

YOUNGSTOWN

State law enforcement agents took 676 computer disks and computers that contain emails from current and former Mahoning County officials as part of the criminal investigation into the 2006 purchase by the county of Oakhill Renaissance Place.

With search warrants, Ohio Bureau of Criminal Investigation’s cyber-crime agents removed the items from the office of county Auditor Michael V. Sciortino at the county courthouse, the county’s information-technologies department — which Sciortino oversees — on the fourth floor of the administration building, and the county’s computer-network facility at Oakhill, according to three search warrants.

The agents spent about eight-and-a-half hours Monday, until about 11:30 p.m., retrieving the evidence, said Dan Tierney, spokesman for Ohio Attorney General Mike DeWine.

Sciortino along with Youngstown Mayor John A. McNally and attorney Martin Yavorcik face a total of 83 criminal counts in the political corruption indictment. The charges include engaging in a pattern of corrupt activity, conspiracy, perjury, bribery, money laundering and tampering with records.

The three are accused of political corruption contending they illegally conspired among themselves and with others to try to impede the 2006 move of the county’s Department of Job and Family Services to Oakhill from Garland Plaza, owned by the Cafaro Co. McNally was a county commissioner at the time.

Agents also seized two county-owned laptops and a computer hard drive from Sciortino’s Austintown home Monday.

“We’ve been cooperating with BCI and the attorney general since May,” when the three were indicted, Sciortino said. “We have absolutely nothing to hide. There was a pretrial last week and not once did they ask about my laptops. Then they show up with search warrants. I don’t understand the blind side they feel they have to do.”

There are two different versions of what happened at Sciortino’s house.

Read more about that in Wednesday's Vindicator or on Vindy.com.