He said the state settled on $8 million as a reasonable estimate of Randazzo's wealth. But Miller told the justices that the law allows the government to freeze up to triple such an amount - or about $13 million in this case. has admitted to paying Randazzo in exchange for favorable treatment just before he took the helm of the Public Utilities Commission of Ohio. Miller acknowledged Wednesday that those amounts exceeded the $4.3 million bribe that Akron-based FirstEnergy Corp. He transferred a home worth $500,000 to his son and liquidated other properties worth a combined $4.8 million, sending some $3 million of the proceeds to his lawyers in California and Ohio. Yost made the request after Randazzo, the former chair of the Public Utilities Commission of Ohio, appeared to be scrambling to unload personal assets.
“And that has to be stopped.”Ī Franklin County judge froze Randazzo's assets in August 2021.
“Somebody receives these criminal proceeds, bribe money, as an employee of the state to take action that benefited FirstEnergy for billions of dollars, and he just wants to take that money, run off with it, spend it down, use it, move it around, give things to his children, so that he's judgment-proof at the end of the day,” the state's lawyer Charles Miller told the court. The state's attorney told justices that Sam Randazzo was “spending down criminal proceeds” when Republican Attorney General Dave Yost moved in to freeze his assets. COLUMBUS, Ohio (AP) - Lawyers disagreed sharply in arguments before the Ohio Supreme Court on Wednesday over whether $8 million in assets belonging to the state's former top utility regulator should have been frozen after he was caught up in a sweeping Statehouse bribery investigation.
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