Dimora's Opening Day

Federal prosecutors outline web of corruption on opening day of the Jimmy Dimora trial
By James F. McCarty, The Plain Dealer


AKRON -- Prosecutors began their racketeering case against former Cuyahoga County Commissioner Jimmy Dimora on Thursday with a broad tale of the rise to power by Dimora and former Auditor Frank Russo in the late 1990s, but then quickly bored down into the specific criminal schemes they say the two men orchestrated.

Lead prosecutor Antoinette Bacon said Dimora and Russo “couldn’t just put a cash register on their desk with a price list” but partnered up early in their political careers to gain power and control of Ohio’s most populous county.

Bacon also told the jury that the two men created an unspoken, unwritten set of rules - a sort of “conspiracy handbook.” Bacon said the rules kept by Dimora and Russo went like this:

Rule 1 : Only deal with people you trust, who are loyal and will keep your secret.

Rule 2: Sometimes, use an intermediary - a bagman - because “the bigger the distance, the harder it is for the FBI to make the link.”

Rule 3: Cover your tracks, “Don’t leave a trail of bread crumbs the FBI can follow,” destroy documents or don’t create documents.

Defense lawyer Andrea Whitaker offered jurors an entirely different story, one that portrayed Russo as the crook and Dimora as a public servant whose only faults may have been his drinking and coarse language.

The commissioner helped people navigate the sometimes confusing halls of county government out of a sense of duty, not in exchange for any payoff or bribe, Whitaker explained.

Gifts and entertainment characterized by prosecutors as bribes actually came from friends and supporters who sought no official favors from the gregarious politician. And Dimora abided by state law, disclosing the gifts on ethics forms.

“The government has confused friendship with corruption,” she said.

Whitaker blamed Russo for helping sow the confusion, calling the former auditor a liar who is trying to implicate his onetime pal to save himself from a lengthy prison term.

All told, Thursday’s opening arguments and first hours of testimony lived up to expectations for a trial billed as the rival to the Sam Sheppard case more than a half century earlier.

Jurors heard snippets about a sexual escapade, a gambling junkets and a $58 steak. They even got a photographic glimpse of Dimora and Russo partying bare-chested.


View full sizeProsecutors also showed the jury a visualization - a pyramid of 18 people - depicting other players they said were involved in the schemes by Russo, Dimora and Michael Gabor, who is also on trial this week in U.S. District Court.

Some of those players, like J. Kevin Kelley, are already well known following previous guilty pleas or trials. Others, however, are lesser known but will likely become very familiar to the jury over the course of what is expected to be a three-month trial.

Bacon told the jury of seven men and five women, for example, some of the role that Kelley played in the criminal enterprise.

Kelley, former school board president in suburban Parma and county engineer’s employee, has admitted taking cash and gifts from consultants and several construction companies or contractors that gained contracts worth hundreds of thousands of dollars with the district. He faces up to six years in prison for his role in multiple schemes.

Prosecutors told the jury that Russo and Dimora got $4,000 each from Kelley.

They also played a number of audio recordings of wiretaps from the FBI investigation of Dimora, noting that they tapped two of his phones because he rarely did work in his office.

They also played recordings of phone calls between Dimora and contractor Steve Pumper , as well as between Pumper and then-Common Pleas Judge Bridget McCafferty.

The charges against Dimora are found in a 36-count, 148-page federal indictment, and say that the longtime power broker used his county commissioner’s office as the base to run a criminal enterprise.

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Background on the trial
•Our guide to everything you need to know

•The players in the trial: attorneys, judge and more
•Who's who? Profiles and information on schemes
•Arrested: The day Dimora was taken away
•Complete coverage of the corruption scandal
•Jimmy Dimora timeline
The charges say that he not only defrauded the public, but sold his position to enrich himself and his friends.

The indictment also says Dimora received bribes and kickbacks, trips, home improvements and appliances, meals, entertainment, jewelry, lodging and prostitutes.

In exchange, the charges state, Dimora steered government contracts, grants and loans, jobs and pay raises. He’s also accused of fixing court cases and favoring his benefactors in dealings with the county.

It alleges that Dimora also attempted to cover his tracks once he was discovered, soliciting forged, backdated invoices for work at his home.

Dimora is on trial along with a co-defendant Gabor, 52, of Parma, a former office assistant in the auditor’s office. Gabor is accused of bribery and conspiracy, including a charge that he tried to pay a judge $10,000 to fix his divorce case.

The trial’s first witness was one of the two lead investigators, FBI agent Michael Massie, who recounted how the county corruption investigation began in the summer of 2007, and mushroomed into a series of wiretaps of the cell phones of Dimora, Russo, Kevin Kelley, Steven Pumper and William Neiheiser.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Ann Rowland played one of the recordings of the commissioner planning a three-day gambling junket to Las Vegas with contractor Ferris Kleem.

“You want me to take care of some things,“ Kleem asked Dimora. “I’ll see what I can do, maybe I’ll be able to take a couple of the girls with us.” Kleem convinced Dimora and Russo to stay at the Mirage hotel and casino, where he reserved them suites at the casino rate - the lowest cost.

During the course of the conversation and two other recorded calls, Dimora discussed lobbying Terry Allan, director of the County Health Department, to resolve a smoking citation filed against Kleem’s restaurant, Tony K’s in Middleburg Heights.

“He’s a friend of Frank Russo’s and mine. He’s a big contractor,“ Dimora told Allan of Kleem. “He’s a real decent person.“

A few days later the citation was dismissed. “Violation not justified,“ the report said.

Dimora also told Kleem he would go to bat for him on the Juvenile Justice Center project, which Kleem’s Blaze Construction Co. had bid to perform general contracting work, and Kleem’s Phoenix Cement company had bid on cement work.

Phoenix was the low-bidder and won the work. But Blaze did not, having far exceeded the proposed budget. Blaze’s bid and another were thrown out.

Gabor also accompanied Dimora, Russo and Kleem to Las Vegas in April 2008, which defense lawyer Leif Christman touched on in his opening statements to the jury.

“I expect to come out of this case a little tattered,“ Christman said. “The old expression about ‘What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas,’ but not in this trial. Not when the FBI is involved.“

With reporting by Peter Krouse, Rachel Dissell, Stan Donaldson and Michael Scott