Judges rules out statements Yavorcik made to FBI in Oakhill case

CLEVELAND

A judge ruled that statements Martin Yavorcik made to the FBI - that one agent described as incriminating – about taking campaign cash without reporting it, telling a friend he could fix his case and the true nature of a $15,000 check from a local businesswoman – can’t be used in his trial.

Both Yavorcik, the lone defendant in the Oakhill Renaissance Place criminal-corruption case not to plead guilty, and prosecutors declared victories after a lengthy Thursday pretrial hearing, The trial is to start Monday.

In an interview with The Vindicator after the hearing, Yavorcik said, “I’m pleased. The issue is they’re not going to be able to use my statement so they’re out.”

Dan Kasaris, the case’s lead prosecutor, said, “We never planned on using it unless he testified and said something different.”

Yavorcik, a failed 2008 Mahoning County prosecutor candidate, met three times with FBI agents in 2010 and 2011. He was granted “pocket immunity,” a kind of informal immunity.

During about 90 minutes of questioning by Yavorcik, an attorney defending himself against 11 felony counts, FBI agent Deane Hassman described the statements as incriminating.

Hassman said on the stand that bank records, campaign finance reports and secretly recorded tapes, among other things, provide the evidence against Yavorcik, and he knew about all of it before the defendant first spoke with the FBI in 2010.

Hassman said Yavorcik admitted to taking campaign cash without reporting it, telling his friend Kurt Welsh he could fix a drunken-driving charge, and $15,000 he received from Flora Cafaro, an executive with her family-owned Cafaro Co. shopping complex business, was a bribe and spent on a poll of his 2008 election.

Welsh is a witness for the prosecution at the trial.

When asked by The Vindicator about his statements to the FBI, Yavorcik said, “I admitted there were instances where I received small amounts of money and didn’t report it. That may or may not be an election violation, but it certainly wasn’t a conspiracy or bribery or money laundering or tampering with records.”

Read more about the hearing in Friday's Vindicator or on Vindy.com.