The late Assemblyman Bill Nojay illegally misdirected funds from a legal client's escrow account to his campaign, to a registered lobbyist, to a car dealer, to his children, and to pay property taxes on his home, according to the criminal complaint he faced when he killed himself in September.

An attorney, Nojay managed the escrow account for a local architect, the complaint shows. While the complaint, publicly unsealed Monday, does not name the architect, the Democrat and Chronicle earlier reported the individual was prominent architect Carlton "Bud" DeWolff.

The complaint has been sealed since Nojay's suicide in September. U.S. District Judge David Larimer Monday ruled that the complaint must be unsealed.

Separate court papers which were unsealed Monday say that Nojay admitted to the wire fraud, and was considering assisting the FBI in a separate investigation, which is not identified in the papers.

In the complaint, the FBI alleged that Nojay diverted about $800,000 in the escrow account for his own use. Nojay allegedly transferred about $221,000 to a Pennsylvania bank account "belonging to a business affiliated with Nojay," says an affidavit from FBI Special Agent Daniel A. Ciavarri.

► The Nojay investigation timeline

Nojay faced the charge of wire fraud when he fatally shot himself, shortly before he was to appear in court. His death came just four days before a Republican primary in which he was a candidate. Nojay, who lived in Pittsford, was seeking re-election to a second term in Albany.

After the suicide, the Democrat and Chronicle filed a motion, seeking the complaint's public release. The U.S. Attorney's Office agreed it should be unsealed.

Nojay's attorney, Donald Thompson, sought to keep the complaint under seal.

"There may, under very limited circumstances, be sufficient reasons to seal a document or a case record, but the reasons to do so must be truly compelling," Larimer wrote in his ruling Monday. "To do otherwise would be tantamount to judicial censorship."

“Nojay, a New York assemblyman, was accused of acts of misconduct involving client funds,” Larimer wrote. “It seems self-evident that the public at large would have an interest in knowing about the substance of these allegations.

“That those charges will never come to trial, due to Nojay’s unfortunate decision to take his life, adds little if any weight to the balance. Had Nojay lived long enough to appear in court, the complaint would have been unsealed, as a matter of course, and the charges would have received widespread publicity.”

Additional document contains new details

Another newly unsealed court document lays out a dramatic series of events that unfolded in the days leading up to Nojay’s death.

Nojay had agreed to cooperate with “an investigation of other matters” in return for possible leniency in his sentencing, and he admitted to the allegations surrounding the DeWolff embezzlement; according to a statement filed by Assistant U.S. Attorney John Field on Sept. 21.

The nature of this other investigation was not revealed in the filing.

Federal authorities delayed filing criminal charges while they interviewed Nojay about those matters. But they came to believe he was being untruthful with them — he allegedly failed a polygraph — and also determined he had deliberately scrubbed information from his computer before surrendering it to them.

As a final test of his probity, Nojay canceled a scheduled appearance at a political function and agreed to undergo a polygraph examination on the afternoon and evening of Sept. 8. But the results “indicated deception,” according to Field’s Sept. 21 filing, and prosecutors told him they were going ahead with the criminal case against him. He asked if it could be kept quiet, but they warned him to expect publicity.

Late that night, his lawyer asked Field to delay the criminal case and passed on an offer from Nojay to recruit another party to cooperate in the ongoing federal investigation. Field wrote in his statement that he offered to pass on the request to his superiors, but that a delay was unlikely given Nojay’s failure to provide reliable information on that other case.

Nojay shot himself to death the following morning rather than report to court.

In his statement, Field wrote that “when meaningful proactive cooperation did not materialize, the justification for postponing criminal charges disappeared.

“At that point, the government had two choices: 1) not charge Nojay, and permit him to stand for another election cycle knowing he had committed a serious crime, and, in fact, had admitted to committing that crime; or 2) charge Nojay, and let the public decide what to do with that information.

“Unfortunately, as we now know, there was another option that Nojay had in mind. That choice was tragic, but that does not give Nojay the right to control his reputation from beyond the grave,” Field concluded.

In November U.S. Magistrate Judge Jonathan Feldman ordered the unsealing of the complaint, but Thompson appealed that decision to the upper-level U.S. District Judge David Larimer.

Larimer ruled that the papers filed seeking the unsealing of the complaint must also be made public. While the Democrat and Chronicle filed its motion publicly, all other legal papers from Thompson and federal prosecutors have been under seal.

Thompson alleged in court filings that the timing for Nojay's criminal charge was political, only days before the primary. He said he based that belief on "the Gregorian calendar, the schedule of the primary election, (and) the U.S. Attorney's stated intention to hold a press conference following the defendant's arraignment."

Federal authorities say that they planned to send out a news release about Nojay's criminal charge but did not plan a news conference.

Thompson said Monday that he thinks Larimer erred by unsealing the papers. He said only papers publicly available when Nojay died should have been available, and the criminal complaint was then sealed.

Larimer did not allow a stay on his ruling for an appeal.

Attorney Christopher Thomas, a lawyer who argued the Democrat and Chronicle's case for release of the papers, said Monday, "The intensely private decision to commit suicide must never trump the intensely public right of access to documents filed in our courts.

"Sunlight is the best antiseptic, particularly when a public official is charged with wrongdoing," Thomas said.

GCRAIG@Gannett.com

SORR@Gannett.com