Corrupt Investor Found Guilty in Democrat Scandal

From The Columbus Dispatch:

Investment manager Mark D. Lay was found guilty this afternoon on all on four federal fraud charges related to his handling of an offshore investment for the Ohio Bureau of Workers’ Compensation that lost $216 million in 2004.

Who’s Mark Lay?  Lay is a major Democrat contributor who used his Ohio Democratic Party connections to convince the BWC to hire his company to manage a multi-million dollar investment fund.   

MDL and Lay were marketed to Ohio’s public investment funds in the late 1990s by Ohio Democrat lobbyist Jerry Hammond, formerly president of the Columbus City Council.

MDL paid Hammond $3,000 a month to introduce the firm to Ohio politicians.

Hammond introduced MDL to BWC oversight commission members, including Ohio Democrats George Forbes and William A. Burga.

Burga is a member of the Democratic National Committee, the Ohio
Democratic Party Executive Committee and president of the Ohio
AFL-CIO.  (Burga also served as a top advisor in 2006 to candidate Ted
Strickland.)

Forbes is president of the Cleveland chapter of the NAACP and a former president of the Cleveland City Council.  His daughter, Mildred, was employed by Lay at MDL. 

When questions were raised within the BWC about the $216 million losses, George Forbes told BWC administrators to "give MDL a break."  The rest is history.  (Read more here.)

Now Mark Lay has been convicted for fraud, and the Ohio Democrats who helped him get the contract have said nothing.