AKRON, Ohio – In an apt coda to the five-year Cuyahoga County corruption case, the first defendant to flip and cooperate with federal prosecutors is the last of more than 60 defendants to be sentenced.

J. Kevin Kelley was an overpaid county government minion, and a member of the Parma school board, who ingratiated himself to ex-County Commissioner Jimmy Dimora and a band of corrupt buddies who called themselves the A-Team.

Kelley, 44, had a key role in dozens of criminal schemes hatched by Dimora, ex-County Auditor Frank Russo, imprisoned attorney Anthony O. Calabrese III, and others now serving time in federal prisons.

Kelley was a bagman for bribes, a social director for debauchery, and a host of gambling junkets, parties with prostitutes, and feasts at expensive restaurants bankrolled by contractors seeking millions of dollars in county business.

U.S. District Court Judge Sara Lioi could sentence Kelley to six years or more in prison, plus order him to pay $700,000 in restitution for his crimes and unpaid taxes.

J. Kevin Kelley

Kelley struck a plea bargain with prosecutors, although the judge is not required to follow the sentencing guidelines recommended in the deal.

Kelly plans to throw himself at the mercy of the judge, accepting responsibility for his crimes, and appealing to Lioi’s sympathy for the personal hardships and medical ailments he has endured over the past five years, according to court documents.

"He willingly chose to insert himself into the fast-and-loose lane of Cuyahoga County politics,” defense attorney John Gibbons wrote in a presentencing memorandum to the judge. “No one forced him into this pattern of conduct.”

Kelley has paid a high price for his decision to turn on his friends and work with the FBI, Gibbons said.

He lost his jobs with the county and the Parma school board, and three homes to foreclosure. He was hounded and ridiculed in the local media, compelling him to move to suburban Tampa, where he lives in a rented house with his wife and four daughters. He suffers from a heart defect, diabetes, sleep apnea, and high blood pressure, Gibbons said.

“"He is now considered a leper with his own extended family in the Greater Cleveland area,” Gibbons wrote to the judge. “Most of his former friends are now jailed. He and his family are socially isolated from their former life.”

Kelley sought to redeem himself by “devoting himself whole-heartedly to the goals of the investigation," Gibbons said.

On July 28, 2008, the FBI launched a countywide raid on government offices, contractors’ businesses and suspects’ homes. Kelley immediately reached out to the FBI.

Kelley walked the agents and federal prosecutors through dozens of criminal schemes:

He told them about bankrolling and plundering the nonprofit Alternatives Agency halfway house, and how he funneled money from the agency to pay for a gambling junket to Las Vegas for Dimora, Russo and their friends;

He told them about accepting tens of thousands of dollars in bribes from electrical contractor Michael Forlani for contracts with the Parma schools;

And he told them about acting as a middleman, paying bribes from Calabrese to Dimora, to win approval of one of the biggest debacles in county history: the $21.8 million purchase of the downtown Ameritrust complex as a site for new county offices. The boondoggle ended up costing the county more than $45 million by the time asbestos was removed and a parking garage was purchased.

Calabrese negotiated a $3 million contract for the Staubach Co. to lead the search for a new site. After the FBI raids, Calabrese tried to convince Kelley to lie if he was approached by agents. What Calabrese didn’t know was that Kelley already was cooperating with the FBI and wearing a hidden wire – one of at least 20 occasions he secretly recorded suspects in the county corruption case, he testified.

The county has since sold the complex, and a developer is building a new county headquarters on the site. Staubach Co. representatives were never charged with any crime.

Federal prosecutors chose not to charge Calabrese for his involvement in the Ameritrust case, but that didn’t stop Cuyahoga County prosecutors from obtaining grand jury indictments against Calabrese for racketeering, bribery and other crimes linked to the ill-fated deal.

In court documents filed Thursday, defense attorney Gibbons said Kelley provided the foundation of the case against Calabrese in a series of interviews with Cuyahoga and Lorain county prosecutors this past March and June. All Kelley asked in return was that they not bring new charges against him.

Gibbons said Kelley also provided the prosecutors heretofore undisclosed evidence of “questionable conduct” by other members of the Parma school board and Parma schools administration.

Despite Kelley’s years of corruption, without him the county corruption landscape might have been different. But with his assistance, Dimora was convicted of racketeering and sentenced to 28 years in prison; Russo was sentenced to 22 years in prison, although he could receive time off for assisting the FBI; and Calabrese was sentenced to nine years in prison.

Only one county corruption case remains unresolved: The 65-count indictment for bribery, fraud and money laundering of William Montague, the former director of the Louis Stokes VA Medical Center in Cleveland. He is charged with providing inside information to a design firm seeking VA contracts at the same time he was secretly working as a consultant for the company.

Montague’s trial is scheduled for April 21.