United States Attorney for the Northern District of Ohio Steven M. Dettelbach, who prosecuted a number of high-profile Mansfield-area cases, has announced he will resign effective Feb. 5.
Dettelbach, 50, plans to reenter private practice.
“Serving as the United States Attorney, and leading and working with the incredible men and women of this office and so many law enforcement agencies, has been the single greatest honor of my professional life,” Dettelbach said. “I want to thank President Obama for affording me that rare opportunity. I hope that in the future I can both serve my clients well and remain an active part of this incredible community through public service.”
As U.S. Attorney, Dettelbach continued to focus on corruption, violent crime and fraud while also making civil rights and cybercrime new priorities. He made efforts in each of those areas to not only ramp up enforcement, but to prevent crime by engaging the community through outreach and creative programming.
Richland County residents may recognize Dettelbach’s name in connection with a couple of regional cases.
In U.S. v. Kevin Dye, Dettelbach successfully prosecuted a Mansfield man who was sentenced to 60 years in prison for the 2009 firebombing of a city hall and a bar fire.
Dye was convicted after Dettelbach argued the defendant used bombs made from milk jugs, cloth, duct tape and gasoline to damage Mansfield City Hall court offices in December 2009. He was scheduled to go on trial at the court on drug and other charges two days later.
Dettelbach also said Dye set an August 2009 fire at Belcher’s House of Rock, where he had been banned.
The prosecutor was also involved in the indictments and convictions in U.S. v. Samuel Mullet et al. on charges of hate crimes based on five violent, religiously based attacks on Amish victims, some of which took place in Knox and Holmes counties. Those convictions were reversed based on a jury instruction error, and witness tampering which resulted in significant prison sentences for all 16 defendants.
Sam Mullet Sr. and 15 of his followers were convicted of cutting off the hair and beards of rivals in their Amish community. Mullet, who originally received a 15-year sentence was re-sentenced to 129 months, or nearly 11 years in prison.
Federal prosecutors alleged the cuttings were meant to shame, insult and terrorize the victims. Mullet and his followers were convicted of religious hate crimes and conspiracy. But the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals threw out the hate crime convictions on the grounds that the judge gave the jury faulty instructions.
Federal prosecutors consider Mullet a dangerous cult leader, who was seeking revenge against anyone who disagreed with him.
Dettelbach publicly issued releases on nearly every case charged. He also took steps to enhance the internal review of cases, requiring for the first time prosecution memoranda and indictment review committees in significant cases. He dedicated two prosecutors to cyber enforcement and formation of the Northern Ohio Cyber Security Consortium with leading businesses in the area.
Among the other high-profile cases prosecuted under Dettelbach:
Human trafficking convictions against more than 40 defendants including Jeremy Mack, the Elyria man sentenced to life in prison for trafficking drug-addicted women and girls, and Jessica Hunt and Jordie Callahan, sentenced to 32 and 30 years in prison, respectively, for holding a woman with cognitive disabilities and her child against their will and forcing the woman to perform manual labor.
U.S. v. Antun Lewis, twice convicting the defendant now serving 35 years in federal prison for setting the deadliest house fire in Cleveland history, which killed eight children and one adult.
More than 1,000 firearms indictments filed against often violent felons during his time in office, one of the leading offices in the nation in that regard.
U.S. v. Randolph Linn, an Indiana man now serving 20 years in prison for driving to Ohio to set fire to the largest mosque in the Toledo area.
Five indictments using death-specification enhancements for people who sold heroin that directly contributed to a fatal overdose.
Successfully prosecutions for fraud and bribery, one of which he personally tried, involving the collapse of the St. Paul Croatian Federal Credit Union, the largest credit union failure in United States history.
U.S. v. Schatz: William B. Schatz, the general counsel of the Northeast Ohio Regional Sewer District, took bribes totaling approximately $682,130 from Robert J. Kassouf, a contractor on NEORSD’s Mill Creek Tunnel project. Stanley Lojek was an intermediary for the bribes. Schatz also embezzled approximately $166,940 from the NEORSD. Schatz was sentenced to nearly six years in prison, Kassouf was sentenced nearly five years in prison and Lojek was sentenced to one year in prison.
U.S. v. Alatrash: Faisal Alatrash, a project superintendent for the Greater Cleveland Regional Transit Authority, was sentenced to more than eight years in prison following his trial for taking bribes from contractors and steering work to his wife’s cleaning company.
U.S. v. Ugochukwu: Christopher Ugochukwu is serving a 26-year prison sentence for leading an organization that brought heroin from Nigeria, Mexico, and Colombia and sold it throughout Greater Cleveland. Authorities seized more than 20 kilograms of heroin in 2010, believed to be the largest heroin seizure in Ohio history. Twenty-three people were convicted of crimes for their roles in the operation.
U.S. v. Ricks: Keith Ricks, the leader of a group that brought large shipments of heroin from Atlanta and Chicago and sold it around the East Side of Cleveland, was sentenced to life in prison. A jury found that Ricks led a conspiracy that included scores of people, robbed rival drug dealers and used violence to control the sale of heroin in the neighborhood around St. Clair Avenue and East 117th Street. Nearly 60 people were convicted in the case.
U.S. v. Wright, et al.: Douglas Wright, Brandon Baxter, Anthony Hayne, Connor Stevens, and Joshua Stafford convicted for the attempted use of a weapon of mass destruction for their efforts to blow up the Route 82 bridge that spans the Cuyahoga Valley National Park. Wright was sentenced to 11 years in prison, Baxter to nearly 10 years, Hayne to six years, Stevens to eight years and Stafford to 10 years in prison.
U.S. v. Persaud: Westlake cardiologist Dr. Henry Persaud was sentenced to 20 years in prison for performing unnecessary catheterizations, tests, stent insertions and causing unnecessary coronary artery bypass surgeries as part of a scheme to overbill Medicare and other insurers by $29 million.
U.S. v. Hazelwood, et al.: Nine people were convicted in one of the largest Internet pill diversion cases in the country and the first in the district. The case involved Hazelwoood and other doctors prescribing and dispensing hundreds of thousands of pills to people who contacted them via web sites Hazelwood controlled.
Dettelbach graduated from Dartmouth College in 1988 and from Harvard Law School in 1991. He lives in Solon, Ohio with his wife and two children.
