Oakhill: Much ado, little punishment

By DAVID SKOLNICK

skolnick@vindy.com

YOUNGSTOWN

Nine years of investigating a supposed criminal enterprise to stop Mahoning County’s purchase of Oakhill Renaissance Place has yielded a lot of allegations about public corruption.

So far, however, the case has yielded just a few convictions.

Those expecting dramatic trials followed by convicts doing hard time in prison have got to be disappointed.

Among the three indicted 23 months ago in the Oakhill corruption case, an investigation that started in 2007, Youngstown Mayor John A. McNally and ex-Mahoning County Auditor Michael V. Sciortino took plea deals, didn’t apologize to the community for their crimes and walked away virtually unpunished.

Even statements by prosecutors at Sciortino’s sentencing last Monday that he lied to them after pleading guilty to reduced charges

– thus making him useless as a witness – didn’t sway a judge to put him in prison.

Martin Yavorcik, the only Oakhill defendant who refused to take a deal, ignored the saying that “he who represents himself has a fool for a client.” A jury found Yavorcik, an attorney who represented himself, guilty March 25 of eight felonies, and he likely will head to prison when sentenced April 22.

He faces up to 29 years in a state prison.

Yavorcik, a failed 2008 county prosecutor candidate, was offered plea deals at least twice and rejected them.

Had he agreed to cooperate with prosecutors, Yavorcik likely would have received probation as did McNally and Sciortino, his two co-defendants.

Among Yavorcik’s convictions is engaging in a pattern of corrupt activity, what Matthew E. Meyer, a prosecutor in the trial, called “as bad as it gets” for “a nonviolent offense in Ohio.”

IN THE BEGINNING

The accusations are that a criminal enterprise was created that illegally and unsuccessfully tried to stop the purchase of Oakhill, the former Forum Health Southside Medical Center, in 2006 in order not to have the county’s Department of Job and Family Services relocated there from Garland Plaza, a building since demolished on Youngstown’s East Side, owned by a Cafaro Co. subsidiary.

The county was paying $449,000 annually in rent to Ohio Valley Mall, the Cafaro subsidiary, to house JFS.

County commissioners voted 2-1, with McNally casting the lone no vote, to buy Oakhill and move JFS there.

Though defendants and a number of witnesses who cut deals said buying Oakhill was a mistake, prosecutors say that decision had nothing to do with the crimes committed or the investigation; it was the supposed conspiracy to do whatever it took to stop the sale that was the actual crime.

With an investigation into purported illegal activity related to the Oakhill sale started by county Prosecutor Paul J. Gains in November 2007, some of those in the criminal enterprise, prosecutors say, bribed Yavorcik to run for prosecutor as an indpendent in 2008 to get him to kill that criminal probe if he was elected. He lost by 38 percentage points.

Gains took his investigation to the Ohio Ethics Commission.

THE 2010 TRIAL

McNally, Sciortino and Yavorcik were among seven people indicted by a grand jury in the case brought by the Ethics Commission in July 2010 in Mahoning County related to the purported Oakhill scandal.

The case was dismissed in July 2011, with the chance to indict again, when the FBI wouldn’t turn over secretly recorded tapes to state prosecutors of at least one defendant.

The FBI gave those tapes – of Yavorcik and Sciortino – to the Ohio Attorney General’s Office that indicted those two and McNally in March 2014.

The other four indicted in 2010 were former county Treasurer John Reardon; John Zachariah, the former JFS director; Anthony M. Cafaro Sr., the retired president of his family-owned Cafaro Co. retail development business; and Flora Cafaro, Anthony Sr.’s sister and a Cafaro Co. executive.

Of those four, prosecutors can’t touch Zachariah because the statute of limitations for him passed. During the Yavorcik trial, Zachariah admitted he lied under oath and that Anthony Cafaro Sr. paid about $15,000 of his legal fees.

Reardon also agreed to cooperate and avoided prosecution. He was convicted of ethics charges not related to Oakhill.

THE 2014 TRIAL

McNally, Sciortino and Yavorcik were indicted again in May 2014, after officials with the Ohio Attorney General’s Office listened to the tapes and presented evidence to a Cuyahoga County grand jury.

Three days before the trial was to start, McNally and Sciortino took deals. Yavorcik decided to forge ahead.

A jury convicted Yavorcik of bribery and money laundering for taking money in 2008 from Flora Cafaro. Her brother, J.J. Cafaro, a retired Cafaro Co. vice president, t estified at the Yavorcik trial that she is in very poor health. She wasn’t called to testify, and is almost certainly not going to be indicted.

J.J. Cafaro and James Dobran, chief legal counsel for the Cafaro Co., testified with immunity at Yavorcik’s trial.

Reardon and Lisa Antonini, his successor as treasurer and a former county Democratic Party chairwoman, also testified for the prosecution at Yavorcik’s trial.

Antonini pleaded to one criminal count related to her illegally taking $3,000 in cash from Anthony Cafaro Sr. and not reporting it on an Ohio Ethics Commission disclosure form, spent five months in a federal prison and agreed to cooperate with prosecutors.

In the grand tradition of Mahoning Valley corruption cases, the trial was not without its colorful moments with Harry Strabala, a political consultant, turning out to be a longtime FBI confidential informant who taped hundreds, if not thousands, of conversations with politicians.

The sound quality of most of those played in court was poor.

WHAT’S NEXT?

FBI special agent Deane Hassman, who has spent the past two decades investigating public corruption in the Mahoning Valley, testified during Yavorcik’s trial that “Anthony Cafaro Sr. is still under investigation.”

Meyer called Cafaro “Mr. Big” seven times during his closing statement in the Yavorcik trial.

The statute of limitations for Cafaro hasn’t expired, but there’s no guarantee that “Mr. Big” will be indicted.

Even if he is, what is the likelihood Cafaro, who turns 70 on April 18, would see prison time, particularly if he’s willing to make a deal?

Based on the year of probation given to Sciortino and McNally, prison time for Cafaro – if he’s ever charged – is highly unlikely.

As part of Sciortino’s deal in Cuyahoga County to plead guilty to one felony and two misdemeanors, he’s to plead guilty April 11 in Mahoning County court to a felony and a misdemeanor. He’ll be sentenced next month, and, as in Cuyahoga County, he won’t spend time in prison.

Sciortino faces 25 felonies here for using county-owned computers and other equipment more than 300 times for political purposes, his personal DJ/band business and law practice, and had three of his employees help him.

Prosecutors in the Yavorcik trial said Anthony Cafaro Sr. spent about $800,000 in legal fees to stop the sale of Oakhill, with an undetermined amount paid to represent McNally, Sciortino and Reardon.

The amount of money paid to prosecute the case isn’t something calculated. But it’s considerably more than McNally’s $3,500 fine and the $240 the mayor and Sciortino will each pay in probation fees.

OAKHILL LEGACY

While this case may be memorable, it’s hardly at the top of the list of the most compelling trials in the history of Mahoning Valley political corruption, said William Binning, a Youngstown State University political science professor from 1970 to 2006, and the chairman of the Mahoning County Republican Party from 1980 to 1988.

Likely at the top are the two federal trials of James A. Traficant Jr., a former county sheriff and congressman, Binning said.

In the 1983 trial, he was acquitted of racketeering charges for taking money from mobsters in what he called a one-man undercover corruption investigation as sheriff. In 2002, as a sitting U.S. House member, he was found guilty of 10 felonies including racketeering, bribery and income tax evasion. Traficant, who wasn’t an attorney, defended himself in both trials.

Oakhill “doesn’t match the colorful mob cases of the past,” Binning said. “This may not be over. We don’t know if a prominent family will have legal action filed against them. It’s been a lot of noise about not that much so far. In comparison to Traficant, other organized-crime cases, and the fraud probes of the 1990s, this ranks low. It’s not going to make ‘60 Minutes.’”

As for the fallout, Binning said McNally’s four misdemeanor convictions won’t hurt his re-election bid next year for Youngstown mayor, even with county Democratic Party Chairman David Betras calling for him to resign or at least not run again in 2017.

McNally isn’t resigning – he said staying in office was a key reason he took the plea – and plans to run for re-election.

“Right now, I’d say he has a good chance to be re-elected,” Binning said. “He got a slap on the wrist and is staying in office. There’s no damage to him. The general sentiment is few people would say he isn’t doing a good job as mayor.”