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Oakhill defendant provides details of prosecutors’ case against him
CLEVELAND
Yavorcik Motion for Testimony
Document
Case No. CR-585428-C: State of Ohio vs Martin E. Yavorcik. Motion for Grand Jury Testimony and Documents for the Oakhill case.
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In a motion seeking to dismiss charges against him, Martin Yavorcik, a defendant in the Oakhill Renaissance Place criminal-corruption case, provided a document outlining the prosecutors’ case against him.
The 24-page document – titled “Marty Yavorcik Presentation” – includes specifics of allegations against him that haven’t been revealed in the thousands of pages of documents filed by both sides in this case.
In a motion filed by Yavorcik on Monday – but not on the online Cuyahoga County Clerk of Courts docket until Wednesday – he wrote that Dan Kasaris, senior assistant Ohio attorney general and the case’s lead prosecutor, met with him some time before the May 14, 2014, indictment.
At that meeting at the AG’s downtown Youngstown office, Kasaris presented him with the PowerPoint slide presentation with “the purported purpose” to “offer a resolution of this matter pre-indictment,” Yavorcik wrote.
The presentation states prosecutors wanted Yavorcik to cooperate as he was “not the brains behind the enterprise and offenses.”
“Kasaris, along with FBI and [Ohio Bureau of Criminal Investigation] agents, proceeded to walk Yavorcik through a series of slides they compiled showing the evidence they were going to present to the grand jury if Yavorcik was unwilling to become a cooperating witness and plead guilty to some crimes,” wrote Yavorcik, who is acting as his own attorney.
Yavorcik, a failed 2008 independent candidate for Mahoning County prosecutor, didn’t agree to be a cooperating witness and was indicted on 29 criminal counts May 14, 2014. At the request of the judge overseeing the case to reduce the number of charges, prosecutors dropped 16 of them against Yavorcik on Jan. 14.
An indictment accuses Yavorcik, along with Youngstown Mayor John A. McNally in his former capacity as a Mahoning County commissioner, and ex-county Auditor Michael V. Sciortino, both Democrats, of being part of a criminal enterprise that conspired to stop or impede the relocation of a county agency from a building owned by a Cafaro Co. subsidiary to Oakhill, the former Forum Health Southside Medical Center owned by the county.
The three have pleaded not guilty to 53 total counts including engaging in a pattern of corrupt activity, conspiracy, bribery, perjury, money laundering and tampering with records.
The presentation to Yavorcik – who lost the 2008 race by 38 percentage points to incumbent Paul J. Gains, a Democrat – that he filed with a motion provides details for the first time of what prosecutors said was his alleged criminal activity.
It includes:
Former Mahoning County Democratic Party Chairwoman Lisa Antonini – who also is an ex-county treasurer, Yavorcik’s close friend and a key prosecution witness – told prosecutors twice that a $2,500 loan she gave to Yavorcik’s 2008 campaign “was a bribe, and no return of money [was] expected.”
Also, prosecutors told Yavorcik they have secretly recorded tapes of him telling Kurt Welsh, Antonini’s boyfriend, that he would take care of a drunken-driving charge against Welsh in Mahoning County Area Court and a potential probation violation he had in Youngstown Municipal Court. That was done because Welsh, who is on the prosecutors’ witness list, helped with Yavorcik’s campaign. The document says Yavorcik admitted it in an interview with the FBI. The allegation has been in other court documents, but this is the first to name Welsh as the client.
Yavorcik said he failed to report various cash donations during the 2008 campaign including a $100 contribution from ex-Mahoning County Prosecutor Gary Van Brocklin, who is on the prosecutors’ witness list.
Antonini told prosecutors that she, Sciortino, and ex-county Treasurer John Reardon, a key prosecutor witness, gave Yavorcik cash to pay for poll workers and it wasn’t reported. The presentation also states there’s a recording of Yavorcik saying the same thing.
Previously reported but part of the presentation is that Flora Cafaro, a Cafaro Co. executive, gave Yavorcik $15,000 that was used by him to conduct a poll of the 2008 prosecutor’s race. The check said it was for legal work for a gym owned by one of her sons, William Ferraro, and her ex-husband, John C. Ferraro, but the two told investigators that wasn’t true and they didn’t know Yavorcik.
The document says Yavorcik told the FBI in December 2010 the money was for the poll and not legal services.
In his filing, Yavorcik repeated an earlier claim that protected information he gave the FBI and Lorain County Prosecutor Dennis Will, a special prosecutor in the first Oakhill case, during three interviews – on March 10 and Dec. 4, 2010, and Feb. 5, 2011 – is being used against him.
That violates the agreement he had that his statements in those meetings would be used as evidence and the case against him should be dismissed. Yavorcik also seeks to get grand-jury testimony to prove that agreement was violated.
He also refiled a separate motion to not permit his statements during those interviews, and secretly taped recordings by Youngstown political consultant Harry Strabala, a prosecutor witness and FBI informant, against him.
Yavorcik points to items in court filings showing prosecutors plan to use information from the FBI interviews in their case.
Dan Tierney, spokesman for the AG’s office, which is prosecuting the case with the Cuyahoga County Prosecutor’s Office, said nearly all the evidence against Yavorcik is from the tapes and not on the defendant’s statements to the FBI and Will.
Meanwhile, Judge Janet R. Burnside of Cuyahoga County Common Pleas Court, who is overseeing the trial, ruled Wednesday against a motion to dismiss the charges from McNally and Sciortino, who contend that attorneys from the attorney general’s office are not permitted to be special prosecutors on this case.
Judge Burnside pointed to a June 25, 2015, filing appointing AG attorneys as Cuyahoga County assistant prosecutors in dismissing the motion.