Sciortino pleads not guilty to latest round of felony indictments

YOUNGSTOWN ­— Ex-Mahoning County Auditor Michael V. Sciortino pleaded not guilty today to 25 felonies accusing him of illegally using government-owned computers and software.

An indictment, unsealed by a Mahoning County grand jury on June 4, alleges Sciortino, 45, a Democrat from Austintown, used the computers and software for his political campaigns and for his private law practice.

He faces 21 counts of unauthorized use of property – computer or telecommunications property – and four counts of theft in office.

This indictment is in addition to the 22 criminal counts Sciortino faces in a separate matter for his purported involvement in the Oakhill Renaissance Place criminal-corruption case.

Sciortino’s criminal conduct is alleged to have started Oct. 6, 2005, about three weeks after he became auditor, and ended Aug. 29, 2012, according to the indictment. He was appointed auditor by the county Democratic Party on Sept. 14, 2005, to fill the vacancy left by the resignation of George Tablack. Sciortino successfully ran in 2006 for a four-year term, was re-elected in 2010, and – while under indictment for the Oakhill case – lost the November 2014 election to Republican Ralph Meacham.

Investigators became suspicious of Scortino’s computer use when, during the execution of a search warrant in Sept. 22, 2014, he said he wanted to keep a public computer overnight at his home and bring it to law enforcement the next day, according to the Ohio Attorney General’s Office, the lead prosecutor on this case. The Ohio Bureau of Criminal Investigation, which is overseen by the AG’s office, refused the request.

BCI cyber-crime agents removed numerous computers and 676 computer disks from Sciortino’s former office in the county courthouse, the county’s information-technologies department at the administrative building and the county’s computer-network facility at Oakhill. The agents also seized two county-owned laptops and a computer hard drive from Sciortino’s home.

The Oakhill indictment, unsealed May 14, 2014, by a Cuyahoga County grand jury, accuses Sciortino along with Youngstown Mayor John A. McNally, a Democrat in his previous capacity as a Mahoning County commissioner, and Martin Yavorcik, an unsuccessful 2008 independent candidate for county prosecutor, of being part of a criminal enterprise to illegally, and unsuccessfully, impede or stop the move of the county Department of Job and Family Services from the Cafaro Co.-owned Garland Plaza to Oakhill Renaissance Place, the former Forum Health Southside Medical Center, owned by the county.

That case is scheduled to start March 1, 2016.