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Insult added to injury

When Columbiana County was first preyed upon by the illegal investment scheme launched by then treasurer Ardel Strabala through his son, Stephen, back in the early 1990s, we learned that $6 million in county money had been lost in the stock market, and another $334,000 had been spent on himself by the younger Strabala.

Now we have learned that the county has been wronged by Stephen Strabala once again.

Even though he was ordered to make restitution of $4.5 million to the county, Stephen Strabala paid back only $33,755 of this money and stopped making payments nearly five years ago. To make matters worse, we have been told that a federal law has changed regarding closing out cases and forgiving associated debts, resulting in termination of Strabala’s restitution requirement.

County Auditor Nancy Milliken contacted federal authorities back in 2012 to find out why the payments had ceased. After not hearing back from the feds, she called them back in 2015 and learned of the law change.

Milliken informed commissioners last year about the ordeal, and commissioners said they planned to check with the county prosecutor to see if the county had any recourse, but he didn’t believe they had done so.

Apparently they hadn’t followed through because when contacted by the Morning Journal, Prosecutor Robert Herron was shocked. Herron checked into it and learned that a court had decided that restitution in a criminal case cannot be enforced once probation ends and Stephen Strabala’s post-prison probation expired in 2006.

Someone should have been keeping an eye on the ball and the prosecutor’s office should have been notified earlier of this situation by our locally elected officials, not by the newspaper and not four years after the payments had stopped.

Herron says that as part of Stephen Strabala’s plea bargain in federal court there was a civil order requiring that Strabala make $4.5 milllion restitution. Herron will now “explore enforcing the civil judgment.”

Let’s hope the county will succeed in enforcing the civil judgment and that at least some of the millions lost will be returned. This isn’t a small amount that should be swept under the carpet.

The county was put into dire straits by the impact of this crime and commissioners were forced to borrow $7.2 million to cover the loss.

In the end, there may be nothing that can be done since it is a federal court decision, but odds of being able to recover some of the funds may have increased if the matter had been pursued sooner.

County officials knew it was unlikely Strabala would ever fully repay the debt, but that’s not the point. Even though his payments were small and inconsistent, the payments should have continued for the duration of Strabala’s life.

Even though we have weathered the storm and paid back the loan we were forced to take to cover the loss, the Strabala investment scandal, the worst in Columbiana County history, continues to hurt us some 23 years after the fact.

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