By Peter H. Milliken

milliken@vindy.com

YOUNGSTOWN

Anthony P. Vigorito, Mahoning Valley Sanitary District plant operations manager, received $100 per person for two-day water system operator license-renewal classes he failed to teach.

He also caused a city water department employee to issue tests with answer sheets for city water department workers to fill out to get fraudulent certificates of completion, according to the state’s bill of particulars obtained by The Vindicator.

Security logs for the city water department show no record of attendance by department employees at scheduled classes Vigorito was to teach there, says the bill of particulars, which provides details of allegations in the fraud case, in which Vigorito was indicted.

Youngstown Water Class Fraud

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Case No. 2017 CR 00317 - State of Ohio vs. Anthony Vigorito, regarding falsified certificates of completion for training of City of Youngstown Water department employees.

DOWNLOAD: Youngstown Water Class Fraud

Twenty-six city water department employees were charged in September 2016 with a misdemeanor count each of falsifying contact hours. Two of the 26 have since died.

Those logs were for May 4 and 5, 2013, and Sept. 18 and 20, 2014, according to the bill filed this month by Robert W. Cheugh II, Kenneth Egbert Jr. and Elizabeth Ewing, assistant Ohio attorneys general.

“Required classroom training was not conducted,” the bill says.

“City of Youngstown employees confirmed with investigators that they signed up for the scheduled two-day trainings at the Youngstown Water Department, but did not actually take classroom instruction,” the bill added.

Atty. Martin F. White of Warren, who represents Vigorito, declined to comment Tuesday on the contents of the bill of particulars.

Youngstown Mayor John A. McNally did not respond to a request for comment after The Vindicator faxed the nine-page bill to his office.

Vigorito used Steve Procick, then a city water department employee, “to provide the tests and answer sheets in packets; and when training students were finished with the tests, the students provided the $100 fee and completed packets that were returned to Procick,” the bill says.

Procick gave the packets and money to Vigorito, who issued the invalid certificates of completion, the bill added.

Vigorito was an Ohio Environmental Protection Agency-approved instructor, who was to teach the classes at the city water department on his own time as a side job, the bill says.

“Renewals of operator’s certificates were issued to Youngstown Water Department employees based on defendant’s purported training, for which he created and issued invalid COCs,” the bill says.

Another allegation in the bill is that Vigorito acknowledged in a Sept. 29, 2014, memo he issued at MVSD that he engaged in a “fraudulent scheme of not requiring training students to attend classroom training” in chlorine safety that was actually given Sept. 18 and 20, 2014, at MVSD’s Meander Plant.

Those who didn’t attend that class could take a quiz attached to the memo and sign the attendance sheet, the memo said.

“The defendant specifically stated in the memo, ‘Please do not write any dates on the test,’ indicating he was aware tests taken without classroom training would be fraudulent,” the bill says.

On March 23, a Mahoning County grand jury indicted Vigorito, 41, of Isaac Avenue, Niles, on two counts each of forgery, tampering with records and falsification of training documents. Vigorito has pleaded innocent to those charges.

Because of his court’s status as MVSD’s appointed designee, Judge Lou A. D’Apolito of Mahoning County Common Pleas Court removed himself from the case due to “an inherent conflict of interest.” Visiting Judge Thomas Pokorny will hear the case, for which a pretrial hearing is set for 9:45 a.m. June 7.

The week before Vigorito’s arraignment April 4, the MVSD board unanimously placed Vigorito on paid administrative leave, converting that to unpaid administrative leave in late April.

Twenty-five Youngstown Water Department workers, along with Procick, who had quit his job there, were found guilty Feb. 27 in Franklin County Municipal Court of falsifying contact hours by claiming they completed coursework to receive OEPA certifications.

Under a plea agreement with the Ohio Attorney General’s Office, the defendants agreed to pay $2,000 in restitution to the city, plus a $1,000 fine and a $250 court administrative fee.

Some agreed to perform 50 hours of community service, but others opted to pay an additional $1,000 fine instead.

The OEPA revoked their certificates. The city reduced the salaries of 24 of the 25 workers, issued five-day suspension notices to all of them and required all to complete a business ethics course.