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The Oakhill investigation isn’t over, a prosecutor says
McNally and Sciortino Character Letters
Document
Character letters to Judge Janet R. Burnside on behalf of John McNally IV and Michael Sciortino in regards to the Oakhill case.
EDITOR'S NOTE — This story has been edited to correct one of McNally's pleas that was mislabeled by prosecutors.
CLEVELAND
After Youngstown Mayor John A. McNally and ex-Mahoning County Auditor Michael V. Sciortino were each placed on probation for a year, a prosecutor in their case said the Oakhill Renaissance Place investigation isn’t over.
“Both of these public officials were dominoes who had to fall [toward] a broader criminal investigation,” said Matthew E. Meyer, a Cuyahoga County assistant prosecutor who handled the Oakhill criminal cases. “Their pleas require cooperation with law enforcement, and we intend to hold them to their agreements.”
Meyer wouldn’t say Monday who else could be prosecuted in this investigation that is almost a decade old.
However, during closing arguments last Wednesday in the related Martin Yavorick trial – which ended Friday with the defendant found guilty by a jury of eight felonies including engaging in a pattern of corrupt activity, conspiracy, bribery and money laundering – Meyer specifically discussed Anthony Cafaro Sr., the retired president of his family-owned Cafaro Co. retail development business.
Meyer called Cafaro “the string-puller” who was “behind the whole thing” and referred to him seven times as “Mr. Big.”
Dan Kasaris, a senior assistant Ohio attorney general who also prosecuted the cases, called Cafaro a “puppet master.”
After McNally and Sciortino were sentenced to probation Monday, Dan Tierney, an attorney general spokesman, said the office “will continue our work on the ongoing public corruption prosecutions and investigations in which we are engaged.”
To date, Cafaro hasn’t been charged in connection with the latest investigation, though he was indicted in 2010’s Oakhill case that was dropped in 2011.
FBI special agent Deane Hassman, who spearheaded the investigation into allegations of local government corruption, testified last week that he continues to investigate the retired businessman. Hassman added that he doesn’t know of anyone in law enforcement who’s questioned Cafaro.
A May 14, 2014, indictment and court records accuse McNally, Sciortino, Cafaro and others, including other former government officials, of being a part of a criminal enterprise that conspired to illegally stop or impede Mahoning County’s purchase of Oakhill Renaissance Place, the former Forum Health Southside Medical Center. They also were accused of trying to stop the relocation of the county’s Department of Job and Family Services from relocating there from the Garland Plaza, a building owned by a Cafaro Co. subsidiary.
In 2006, county commissioners voted to buy Oakhill and relocate JFS there. The vote was 2-1 with McNally casting the lone no vote.
The enterprise allegedly had Yavorcik run in 2008 as an independent for county prosecutor to make an investigation go away if he was elected. He lost to incumbent Prosecutor Paul J. Gains, a Democrat.
Unlike McNally and Sciortino, Yavorcik didn’t take a plea and was found guilty Friday of eight felonies. He’ll be sentenced April 22, and faces up to 29 years in state prison, prosecutors said Monday.
McNally’s convictions are related to his faxing the county’s confidential offer to buy Oakhill on July 26, 2006, to attorneys at Ulmer & Berne, a Cleveland law firm that represented the Cafaro Co., and for making false statements during a sworn deposition.
Sciortino’s convictions are connected to his receiving free legal services from Ulmer & Berne, paid by Anthony Cafaro Sr., then president of the Cafaro Co., in 2006, and, like McNally, for making false statements during a sworn deposition.
Judge Janet R. Burnside of Cuyahoga County Common Pleas Court, who sentenced McNally and Sciortino, said to the former auditor that “a lawyer who would go into a deposition and make a bald-face lie” is “troubling.”
McNally told the judge he was “cavalier and arrogant” when he wasn’t truthful in that 2006 deposition about conversations he had with John Zachariah, then county JFS director.
“It’s a black mark on my public record,” McNally said before sentencing.
McNally and Sciortino, both Democrats, pleaded guilty to reduced charges Feb. 26, three days before they were to go to trial.
McNally was charged with 18 felonies and seven misdemeanors. He pleaded guilty to four misdemeanors: two counts of falsification – reduced from perjury – and one count each of unlawful use of a communications device – reduced from telecommunications fraud – and attempted disclosure of confidential information – reduced from unlawful influence of a public official.
Sciortino’s deal had him plead guilty to a felony count of having an unlawful interest in a public contract – reduced from a higher felony of tampering with records – and one misdemeanor count each of falsification – reduced from perjury – and receiving or soliciting improper compensation. The latter charge was in the indictment.
As part of the deal, McNally is permitted to remain mayor and paid a $3,500 fine. Sciortino wasn’t fined and is forbidden from holding a public office for seven years.
Neither apologized to the public for his crimes during sentencing.
After being sentenced, McNally said he planned to run for re-election for Youngstown mayor next year.
“The voters next spring and then next fall will determine whether they want me to be mayor of Youngstown again,” he said. “I expect that they will. I look forward to running for re-election.”
During an interview with the media after the court appearance, McNally said, “I had my reasons for opposing the [Oakhill] purchase. Many, if not all, of them were valid.”
When asked by The Vindicator if his guilty pleas are a black mark on Youngstown, McNally said: “I don’t think it’s a black mark on the city at all – at all.”
He mentioned that numerous people – residents, city workers and members of city council – have given him a “positive reaction.”
Sciortino also will plead guilty Thursday in Mahoning County Common Pleas Court to one felony and one misdemeanor as part of the deal. He faced 25 felonies in his home county accused of illegally using county-owned computers and other equipment more than 300 times for political purposes, his personal DJ/band business and law practice, as well as having four employees help him.
While on probation, McNally and Sciortino, both attorneys, must place themselves on inactive status with the Ohio Supreme Court and cannot practice law during those 12 months. Neither is making a living as a lawyer.
McNally will cooperate with officials investigating public corruption in the Mahoning Valley for only a year, while Sciortino’s cooperation is indefinite.
However, Kasaris and Meyer said before sentencing that Sciortino wasn’t telling the truth during a March 7 interview with them about Cafaro’s paying legal fees for Ulmer & Berne. Sciortino contended he wasn’t aware of that at the time.
The prosecutors said they couldn’t use Sciortino as a witness during Yavorcik’s trial and questioned if he was lying when they interviewed him.
“We believe him to be less than truthful,” said Kasaris, who called it “willful blindness” by Sciortino.
John B. Juhasz, Sciortino’s attorney, said his client didn’t find out about Cafaro’s paying the legal fees until much later and “we don’t believe he’s being disingenuous.”
Before sentencing, Sciortino acknowledged he had a drinking problem and had gone to rehab – something he told The Vindicator in September 2014.
Sciortino said March 14, 2014, the day he was indicted, was his sobriety date.
Kasaris said in court that on Feb. 26, the day Sciortino took his plea deal, he had a “diluted” drug test that was given as part of the agreement.
Juhasz said that happened because the drug-testing company Sciortino was sent to was closing for lunch when they arrived and were told to come back later. Sciortino needed to urinate and couldn’t wait, so he used the restroom, and in order to provide enough urine for a sample, he drank water at lunch, Juhasz said.
Juhasz said Sciortino has had problems with alcohol, but he’s never used marijuana and would be willing to provide a hair sample to prove that.
Judge Burnside said the two have to report to the probation office once every six months and have to do 20 hours each of community service.
If Sciortino violates his probation, he will be sent to state prison for a year, the judge said. She didn’t address what would happen to McNally and didn’t say in court what would constitute a probation violation.
Gains, who initiated the investigation in 2007, was in the courtroom during sentencing, and appeared agitated that the two each received a year’s probation.
“Elected officials take an oath to defend and support the constitution and the laws of the state of Ohio,” he said. “Attorney McNally, by his failure to accept the majority vote of the board of county commissioners, did not follow the laws of the state of Ohio.”
CORRECTION
In coverage of Youngstown Mayor John A. McNally’s trial results, The Vindicator described one of the crimes to which he pleaded guilty as “attempted unlawful influence of a public official” and then referred to that charge as “attempted bribery.”
Neither “attempted unlawful influence of a public official” nor “attempted bribery” is correct. The mayor pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor, which in nonlegal phrasing is attempted disclosure of confidential information.
Misidentifying the mayor’s crime arose from an apparent clerical error in one of the many counts of McNally’s indictment: Count 63. The indictment’s heading for Count 63 called the crime “public official or employee’s unlawful influence,” which would be akin to bribery as popularly understood.
But the indictment’s heading for Count 63 was mistaken. The actual language of the indictment quoted from a state law that bars public officials or employees from disclosing confidential information.
At McNally’s guilty-plea hearing, the court granted the prosecutor’s recommendation to amend Count 63 of the indictment to make it an attempted disclosure of confidential information instead of a completed disclosure of confidential information.
But no one addressed the mistaken heading of Count 63 – ”unlawful influence”– as it appeared in the indictment. Because of that heading, The Vindicator described the mayor’s conviction as pleading guilty to “attempted unlawful influence.”
He did not. McNally pleaded guilty to attempted disclosure of confidential information.