Suspended judge, her husband arraigned by feds

Staff report

CLEVELAND

Suspended Mahoning County Court Judge Diana Vettori-Caraballo and her husband pleaded not guilty Monday at their arraignments in federal court to charges she bilked a woman’s estate out of several thousand dollars and then lied about it on their tax returns.

Both Vettori-Caraballo and her husband, Ismael Caraballo, were released on $20,000 unsecured bond before Judge Dan Aaron Polster in the U.S. Northern District Court of Ohio. The pair were indicted Nov. 15.

A pretrial conference of Feb. 6 was also set followed by another pretrial conference Feb. 25 and a jury trial for March 4.

Investigators believe Vettori-Caraballo stole between $100,200 and $328,000 in cash from the home of Dolores Falgiani after Falgiani died in March 2016 then deposited the money intermittently and between several accounts, to avoid federal reporting requirements.

Ismael Caraballo is charged with filing a false tax return as he filed jointly with Vettori-Caraballo.

In March, Vettori-Caraballo was set to plead guilty, but changed her mind at the plea hearing in federal court.

She is barred from hearing cases by the state Supreme Court while her case is pending. She had served on the county court in Sebring and also worked as a visiting judge, having presided over cases in Youngstown Municipal Court several times. She was first elected in 2002 and has since been reelected twice. The supreme court handed its suspension down in January.

The indictment also charges Vettori-Caraballo with structuring 22 deposits of the stolen cash across five different banks over the course of four weeks, to skirt regulations requiring banks to report cash transactions of more than $10,000 to the IRS. She also allegedly lied to FBI agents about the theft and illegal deposit.

Vettori-Caraballo told FBI agents she hadn’t “received a nickel” from the Falgiani’s estate and instead claimed the money came from her husband’s retirement account.