Tom Noe, the Toledo-area coin dealer who embezzled over a fourth of the $50 million rare-coin fund he managed for the Ohio Bureau of Workers' Compensation, was sentenced to eighteen years in prison this morning. Noe will begin serving his sentence after he finishes a 27-month federal sentence for illegally funneling over $45K to George W. Bush's reelection campaign.
From the Columbus Dispatch:
http://www.dispatch.com/...
Judge Thomas J. Osowik also ordered that Noe start serving the state sentence after he finishes a 27-month prison term for an unrelated federal conviction. That means he will spend at least 20 years behind bars.
Osowik also fined Noe $139,000 plus the cost of the investigation, which prosecutors said was nearly $3 million.
A hearing also has been scheduled one week for today to determine what restitution Noe must pay, which prosecutors say is at least $13.7 million that Noe stole from the $50 million investment he managed for the Ohio Bureau of Workers' Compensation for personal use.
Noe lawyer John R. Mitchell said after the sentencing that Noe, who appeared in court shackled in a blue Lucas County jail jumpsuit, would appeal the conviction but declined further comment.
A Lucas County jury convicted Noe on 29 of the 40 felony counts including engaging in a pattern of corrupt activity, aggravated theft, money laundering and tampering with records.
The jury acquitted Noe on seven money laundering and four tampering with records charges.
But Noe was convicted on the most serious charges, a first-degree felony theft of more than $1 million and the racketeering charge. The later carries a mandatory sentence of at least 10 years in prison.
From the Toledo Blade:
http://www.toledoblade.com/...
Two of the jurors who sat on the eight-woman, four-man panel that found Noe guilty on 29 charges attended the sentencing. They were the first to arrive in the courtroom.
Alice Peters said she felt 15 years would have been sufficient. But she said Noe was guilty. “If you do the crime, you do the time,” she said.
Asked if the source of the funds — the workers’ compensation fund — affected jurors, she said it did. “Yes, because he was stealing from the people,” she said.
The Blade's editorial page left no doubt of its opinion last week:
http://www.toledoblade.com/...
The guilty verdict handed Tom Noe this week was more than a condemnation of a thief and con man. It was a repudiation of Ohio governors George Voinovich and Bob Taft and the pay-to-play culture they, state GOP Chairman Bob Bennett, and their minions so carefully crafted over the last two decades.
Although the names of the current and former governor were not mentioned at the coin dealer’s three-week trial, Mr. Taft and Mr. Voinovich, now a U.S. senator, presided over a bureaucracy that allowed Noe to steal millions from the injured workers’ trust fund of Ohio.
That may seem a harsh judgment to our readers, but state officials gave Noe a first $25 million in 1998 when then-Governor Voinovich was in charge and gave Noe a second $25 million in 2001 when Governor Taft reigned over a near GOP lock on state government. The millions flowed to Noe even after a workers’ compensation internal auditor raised red flags in 2000 about missing coins and bad management practices by Noe. Top state officials told the auditor to back off and leave Noe alone.
What’s remarkable about this sad story is not that Noe was able to use campaign cash to gain access and favor from the most powerful leaders in Columbus and Washington, but that after they gave him the keys to government coffers, his political benefactors provided such little oversight, allowing him to plunder state funds for seven years. It wasn’t until two reporters of this newspaper began asking questions that his scheme began to unravel, and although this newspaper was criticized during its investigation, the validation of its work came Monday in a Toledo courtroom.
Noe’s demise helped bring down the Republican Party in Ohio, as evidenced by the stinging defeat last week of GOP candidates across the state. What punishment would the party faithful mete out to Noe if they were given the chance?
Judge Thomas Osowik on Monday will decide how long Noe will also spend behind bars in an Ohio prison after being found guilty on 29 felony counts. The minimum sentence is 10 years. The maximum is 72. What punishment is appropriate for a man who stole from the injured workers of Ohio only to enrich himself so he could con even more influential officials? The decision would be harder if he had expressed any remorse, any guilt. But he has not.