Former Trumbull JFS director seeks expungement of records

Staff report

WARREN

Tom Mahoney, who was fired from his job as Trumbull County Job and Family Services director in 2009 for buying drugs from a temporary JFS employee, wants his record to be expunged.

A hearing on the request is scheduled for Thursday before Judge Ronald Rice of Trumbull County Common Pleas Court.

Mahoney’s attorney, Robert Shaker, filed a request Oct. 28 for his records to be sealed, saying Mahoney is eligible, has no other criminal proceedings pending, “that his rehabilitation has been attained; and that sealing/expunging of the records of the charges and convictions is consistent with the public interest.”

Mahoney, 63, of Bluffton, S.C., earned $107,344 per year and supervised 261 employees before his termination. The agency on North Park Avenue serves low-income residents.

Mahoney was convicted of cocaine possession after the Trumbull Ashtabula Group Law Enforcement Task Force charged a temporary JFS worker, Kenneth Greep of Vienna, with drug trafficking, and Greep helped investigators snare Mahoney by wearing a recording device.

Mahoney was offered a chance to walk away from the charge without a criminal record, but he used cocaine while on his treatment program, and the violation led to a conviction.

Mahoney told a judge in 2009 that his drug problem resulted from the stress he was under while running the agency. “I was under a lot of pressure. I was asked to do a lot of things by my employer,” he said. JFS director is hired by the county commissioners.

The request is that records be sealed at the common pleas court, sheriff’s office and jail, county adult probation department, county prosecutor’s office, FBI, Ohio Bureau of Criminal Investigation, Ohio Attorney General’s office and the three major credit-reporting agencies.