The Obama administration focused on sole proprietors and tiny real estate firms after the 2008 crash, while keeping gigantic banks out of trouble with bailouts. One of the most terrifying cases involved a Republican real estate broker Tony Violawho served nine and a half years in prison as a juicy target of Ohio Democratic prosecutor Dan Kasaris. He was convicted of allegedly defrauding banks into offering mortgage loans without a down payment. But in reality, banks knowingly offered these loans – evidence the prosecutor’s office refused to do so.
Viola was only released from prison thanks to a prosecutor’s office employee, Dawn Pasela, who was so disgusted by the suppression of evidence showing that banks had not been defrauded, and other types of corruption, such as missing computers full of evidence, that she switched sides, helping Viola pursue a successful pro se appeal from prison.
But nothing happened to Kasaris or the federal prosecutor involved in the case, Mark Bennett. Pasela’s parents, Edward and Karen Pasela, who have been relatively still until now, are so outraged that they took part in the press conference with investigative journalist Brian Douglas, who last month exposed what happened in the Viola case and the extent of corruption in Ohio’s criminal justice legal system.
Douglas collected Viola’s story in the form: two-part series among whom were Viola’s former colleagues who testified to his impeccable character. For his efforts, Douglas faced a lawsuit from Kasaris’ Douglas lawyer attached in its investigation to make people aware of bullying. Douglas was forced to hire his own lawyer.
Several FBI agents threatened Pasela with charges if he did not leave the state and avoid testifying. They said they would press charges against her for violating the NDA, but she never signed the NDA.
Pasela was found dead on the day she was scheduled to testify in court for the first time in Viola’s defense, and without a real investigation, it was ruled as alcohol poisoning. Pasela’s parents want a full investigation into their daughter’s death.
Kelly Patrick, who was married to John Patrick, Kasaris’ brother, revealed how she discovered that Kasaris had intervened as district attorney to prevent his brother from being prosecuted for domestic violence against her and growing marijuana. He also has evidence that Kasaris had a long-term extramarital affair with a key prosecution witness, Kathryn Clover, documented through over 100 pages of Facebook messages with his wife, Susan. Bennett admitted that Clover, who was a paralegal for the prosecutor’s office, not really she was largely a witness to the facts as presented to her, she committed perjury, but she was not allowed to recant her testimony even though she wanted to.
Elsebeth Baumgartner also spent several years in prison due to legal corruption in Ohio. She discovered that $1.4 million had been improperly spent on schools and, as a lawyer, brought federal racketeering lawsuits against those responsible. Kasaris impeached her for intimidating a judge with lawsuits – even though no federal judge has ever ruled her lawsuits to be without merit.
She believes she was targeted because she ran away blog exposing all corruption. She said the corruption and cover-up were so earnest that she was unable to bring justice. “There is no place to bring charges of public corruption against a public official.”
Brenda Bickerstaff, a private investigator, explained how, as part of her job, she tried to talk to a witness in a high-profile case and Kasaris threatened to indict her if she did so.
Bob Grunstein, who wrote “Bad minds, high places“about how powerful people in Ohio’s criminal justice system abused the system to attack him after he dared to criticize an Ohio judge, he shared how widespread corruption is in Viola’s case. He said the problem is that the corrupt are untouchable. “Any new rules and laws don’t matter because they won’t follow them and no one will hold them accountable. No one will come forward because they are afraid of what will be done to them. The federal courts protect their friends in the lower courts because that’s where they come from.”
Viola said his case boils down to four key facts: First, prosecutors never handed over the $20 million they collected in “compensation” to the “victims,” the gigantic banks. Instead, it was used as a sort of “junk fund” for prosecutors who bought laptops, hotel rooms, etc. Viola calls this money laundering. Second, the FBI admitted that for 10 years it had no knowledge of approximately 10,000 documents, many of which exonerated him.
Third, the judge in his case, Federal District Court Judge Donald Nugent, sealed Clover’s files so that Viola and others could not employ evidence of her role to expose prosecutorial corruption in his and other cases. And fourth, Kasaris used a Yahoo email account with his official signature to conduct official business and employ it as a back channel to communicate with criminal defense attorneys.
Mariah Crenshaw of a criminal justice reform organization In pursuit of justice stated that laws could be changed to put an end to this type of abuse. He is proposing legislation that would allow prosecutors to be charged with criminal negligence for withholding potentially exculpatory evidence, and wants to allow defense attorneys to present their case to a grand jury rather than leaving it solely to prosecutors.
Viola wants Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost to suspend Kasaris and conduct a full investigation into his wrongful prosecution, as well as a Justice Department investigation into Bennett. U.S. Senator Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio) he asked in November, the FBI asked the Inspector General to investigate the FBI’s actions in the Viola case, but so far no response has been received.
Maybe Viola will finally end up somewhere because so many people are interested in his case. Even Black Lives Matters comes into play. As people from across the political spectrum express their outrage over the criminal case, perhaps the corrupt players responsible for imprisoning an innocent man will finally be investigated and the acquittal of the more than a thousand other people in the real estate industry who have likely also been wrongly accused.
