Cleveland Contractor Charged with Bribing Public Officials

William J. Edwards, United States Attorney for the Northern District of Ohio, C. Frank Figliuzzi, Special Agent in Charge of the Cleveland Division of the FBI, and Jose A. Gonzalez, Special Agent in Charge of the Internal Revenue Service today announced that a nine-count Information was filed charging former DAS Construction Company Chief Executive Officer Steven Wayne Pumper in connection with the Cuyahoga County public corruption investigation. This Information follows the guilty pleas of John Kevin Kelley, Kevin F. Payne, Daniel P. Gallagher, and Brian Schuman to charges of bribery, fraud, obstruction and other federal offenses. They await sentencing.

The Information charges Pumper with participating in four bribery schemes and one fraud scheme. It also charges Pumper with two counts of obstructing the grand jury investigation, one count of making a false statement to law enforcement and one count of structuring financial transactions. According to the Information, Pumper bribed public officials in the City of Cleveland, Cuyahoga County, the Parma City School District and an unidentified school district. Kevin Kelley, former President of the Parma School Board has pleaded guilty to receiving one of the bribes charged in the Pumper information.

If convicted, the defendant’s sentence will be determined by the Court after review of factors unique to this case, including the defendant’s prior criminal record, if any, the defendant’s role in the offense and the characteristics of the violation. In all cases the sentence will not exceed the statutory maximum and in most cases it will be less than the maximum.

This case is being prosecuted by Assistant U.S. Attorneys Ann C. Rowland and Antoinette T. Bacon, following investigation by the Cleveland office of the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Internal Revenue Service. The investigation is ongoing.

An Information is only a charge and is not evidence of guilt. A defendant is entitled to a fair trial in which it will be the government’s burden to prove guilt beyond a reasonable doubt.