Steve Orr, and Gary Craig

Democrat and Chronicle

A year and five months after state Assemblyman Bill Nojay shot himself to death in a city cemetery, the accusations against him of fraud and thievery continue to echo through Western New York and beyond.

Nojay took his life the morning of Sept. 9, the day he was to turn himself in on a federal fraud charge that he had embezzled nearly $1 million from a long-time friend. With a Rochester policeman nearby but too late to intervene, Nojay died near his brother’s burial plot.

Why Nojay made the painful decision he did on Sept. 9, anguishing his family and friends, will never be known. But an investigation into Nojay’s affairs by the Democrat and Chronicle found just how profoundly the world was closing in on him that day.

Nojay, who preached fiscal constraint and moral rectitude from his political soapbox, was about to be revealed as a thief: Just days before he died, he had scammed a huge sum of money from a second friend to repay the first, robbing Peter to pay Paul.

Speculative business deals on two continents had collapsed, and he was accused of the same sort of government corruption he had railed against so often.

And the Democrat and Chronicle investigation has uncovered new details of these civil and criminal entanglements, many of which outlive him:

The FBI public corruption investigation that led agents to uncover Nojay’s theft last spring is continuing today. The investigation initially focused on Rochester's huge school modernization program. The target or targets remain unknown.

Nojay and the money he pilfered were also at the heart of a lengthy civil suit in Rochester that neither the FBI nor the public knew about. The proceeding was sealed by the court to protect the reputations of Nojay and other parties.

In a desperate bid to stave off criminal charges and civil ruin, Nojay obtained $700,000 from a benefactor to partially replenish the stolen funds. That benefactor now says he was conned by Nojay and may bring suit to recover his $700,000.

At least a half-dozen legal actions are pending against Nojay’s estate. Some stem from speculative business deals and most accuse him of fraud. Aggrieved parties are seeking millions of dollars in damages and a public administrator is stretching to satisfy as many claims as he can.

►READ: Key documents related to the Nojay case

►MORE: Why we investigated the Bill Nojay case

Nojay, who was 59 when he died, was a city boy who grew up to be a Pittsford lawyer and politician with an affinity for rural agribusiness and a keen interest in international affairs.

He was a provocateur with a daily radio show and a reputation as the most conservative member of the state Assembly. An early and influential supporter of President Donald Trump, he was known for his generosity toward non-profits and charities.

► The Nojay investigation: A timeline

Yet the newspaper's investigation shows a darker side, a man whose misdeeds caused his universe to collapse in the space of a month last summer — the worst of it coming in a single day in August.

The cobweb of charges and counter-charges started years ago in the most unlikely of locations — the Middle Eastern country of Jordan.

The money from Jordan

The mountain rises from the rugged Jordanian countryside, in a place called Na’ur not far from the capital city Amman. From the small peak's crest, which is dotted with trees, one can see the Dead Sea, the lowest spot on Earth.

King Abdullah II, the ruler of that Middle Eastern nation, had decided the mountain would become home to a magnificent new cancer treatment and research center named for his late father, Hussein.

The project's managers chose Rochester architect Carlton “Bud” DeWolff, then in the fifth decade of a successful, inventive career, to design the medical institute. In October 2005, DeWolff signed a $9.1 million contract to carry out the work.

His lawyer for the project was his long-time associate and friend Bill Nojay.

Nojay, who specialized in business law, subsequently was named escrow agent, making him the financial middleman between the two parties. The Jordanians would transfer money to pay DeWolff into an escrow account. The architect would submit an invoice and, if the Jordanians voiced no objection, Nojay would send the money on to DeWolff.

DeWolff's design was for an accessible, organic complex that was welcoming, not intimidating, to patients and families. King Abdullah, whose quasi-governmental development fund paid for the project, was said to be most pleased with the concept.

Things went well for a time. DeWolff and his associates prepared detailed designs for the King Hussein Institute for Biotechnology and Cancer, and builders began erecting the building’s frame. Millions of dollars passed through the escrow account without incident.

But by 2009 the Jordanian project managers had begun to complain that DeWolff’s team was falling behind schedule. DeWolff had his own grievances with the project owners, though court papers do not spell out what they were. The parties renegotiated their contract to reduce DeWolff’s workload.

But tensions worsened and in 2010 the Jordanians, claiming language in the revised contract gave them more control over fees, directed Nojay not to pay out any more funds from the escrow account.

DeWolff demanded the money in the account — slightly more than $1 million — be released. Nojay, arguing he was caught in the middle, declined to do so.

The architect eventually quit the project, which has never been finished, and the two sides sparred for several years over money. The Jordanians said they’d overpaid and DeWolff complained he’d been shorted. They met in London with a mediator in 2014 but failed to resolve their differences.

As they bickered, the money sat in the escrow account untouched for years — or so DeWolff and the Jordanians believed. What they had no way of knowing was that their escrow agent, Bill Nojay, had begun to loot it.

‘Allegations of public corruption’

In September 2015, with Nojay's theft of money from the DeWolff escrow account still a secret, an event occurred that, in retrospect, contributed mightily to his downfall: A New Jersey businesswoman decided she’d had enough of trying to work with him.

That woman, Barbara Armand, owner of a construction management firm, was a principal in a startup company that had just been given a lucrative program management contract in Rochester's gigantic $1.3 billion school modernization campaign.

Mayor Lovely Warren, who said Armand was the right person to play a leading role in the company, had engineered the contract’s approval.

The titular head of the company, recruited for the role by Bill Nojay, was Bud DeWolff. The Assemblyman, who had voted against the state legislation that authorized the modernization program, had helped create and organize the company and intended to be a paid employee or a partner. He'd help draft the documents that were used to select the program manager.

He had gone to considerable lengths to conceal his involvement from the public and from the board that voted to award the contract, however.

But in mid-September Armand unexpectedly informed modernization officials she wasn’t comfortable working with Nojay, who she accused of asserting undue influence over their affairs.

Armand’s resignation from DeWolff EPIC, as the company was known, was its undoing. Warren pulled her support and the company's multi-million dollar contract was rescinded. Nojay’s involvement became an open secret among people in local government. His digital fingerprints were found on the selection documents.

It was at about this time, in the autumn of 2015, that the FBI began to look into the DeWolff EPIC contract. The case was one of "allegations of public corruption," as a document filed in Nojay's criminal case puts it.

DeWolff knew nothing about it at the time. The following May, he told a reporter that FBI agents had just visited him and told him Nojay had been going behind his back. “That was a shock but they showed me proof,” he said.

The FBI inquiry into the school contract led to related matters, including what the criminal complaint described as "suspicious campaign finance activity." That refers at least in part to an independent political action committee that backed Warren’s insurgent campaign for mayor in 2013, three independent sources have told the Democrat and Chronicle. As the newspaper reported last year, Nojay worked covertly for that committee.

The political action committee was created shortly before the Democratic primary that fall by Albany lobbyist Robert Scott Gaddy, an associate of both Nojay and Warren. Gaddy provided the PAC with $40,000. He and Nojay, who worked through a Florida shell company that disguised his involvement, spent the money producing pro-Warren radio ads and literature.

Warren said this week that she did not know Gaddy was behind the PAC until later, and had no idea of Nojay's involvement until last year.

Federal authorities said in court documents that some of the money Nojay took from the fund had been given to a “registered New York state lobbyist” who they chose not to name. Asked recently if Nojay had given him money, Gaddy said he had gotten nothing from the escrow account. Federal authorities declined to answer which state lobbyist they allege was the recipient of the money.

While the FBI refuses to discuss its investigative steps, the criminal complaint against Nojay says agents had reviewed his financial records. His bank statements would have shown when he removed money from the escrow account and what he did with it.

Armand, whose email the day after she'd resigned may well have triggered the FBI investigation, has never spoken publicly about DeWolff EPIC and Bill Nojay. The Democrat and Chronicle could find no one in Rochester who has spoken to her since mid-2015, and has been unsuccessful in numerous attempts to reach her at her company's offices in New Jersey and New York City.

Asked if they had interviewed Armand, FBI officials declined to comment.

As for Nojay, he apparently had no idea in the fall of 2015 that the FBI was interested in his activities. When asked in May by a Democrat and Chronicle reporter about his involvement with the school modernization company and with the pro-Warren PAC, he said it all had been above-board and motivated by altruism.

He hinted darkly that Armand and others had conspired to torpedo DeWolff EPIC. "It smells bad, but welcome to New York politics," he said.

‘Not that Mr. Nojay would ever do that’

As federal investigators began to sniff around Nojay's apparent misuse of escrow account funds in the fall of 2015, a civil lawsuit was unfolding a few miles away from their office that involved that very same pot of money.

The case had been filed in the spring of 2015, but the FBI had no way of knowing this, however, because the matter had been sealed from public view by court order.

The suit had been brought by Bud DeWolff. It had been five full years since the Jordanians had ordered the Pittsford lawyer to withhold payment from their architect. DeWolff had finally gone to court to demand release of the $1 million that he believed was being held for him in the escrow account for which Nojay was the agent.

At the parties' initial appearance before state Supreme Court Justice Matthew Rosenbaum in June 2015, a lawyer had given utterance to what would prove to be one of the more ironic statements ever made in a Rochester courtroom.

“What happens, goodness forbid, if Mr. Nojay, you know, did something that — with the funds he wasn’t supposed to,” a lawyer for the Jordanians, Philip J. Loree Jr., said during oral arguments about hypothetical problems with the escrow account. “Not that Mr. Nojay would ever do that.”

► Bill Nojay: A look back at his life and career

But Nojay already had.

As million-dollar lawsuits go, DeWolff v. Escrow Agent for a Certain Escrow Account, as the matter was entitled, was dry as toast. It revolved around seemingly contradictory clauses in the agreements between DeWolff and the Jordanian sponsors of the cancer institute.

What may have been most unusual about it was that its very existence was concealed from public view until now.

Shortly after the case was assigned to Justice Rosenbaum in the spring of 2015, he signed an order to seal the matter “in consideration of the parties involved, the sensitivity of the subject matter and in general the interests of the public.” There would be no public record of the case.

All of the attorneys agreed to the sealing, with the Jordanians' attorneys apparently concerned about the possible release of proprietary information and Rochester-area lawyers wanting to ensure Nojay's reputation was not tainted by the litigation. “He was a public figure,” said John Dreste, one of DeWolff's lawyers.

Moving the case behind closed doors was allowed under court rules, but nonetheless an unusual step for a civil action over money. Rosenbaum said he could not discuss litigation that he had ruled upon.

Rosenbaum unsealed the case earlier last month at the request of the Democrat and Chronicle.

After oral arguments and the filing of written pleadings, Rosenbaum ruled in January 2016. Rosenbaum ruled that the Jordanians did not have the right to block payments to DeWolff from the escrow account.

To Nojay, who was a party to the lawsuit but played no active role in the arguments, this would have been a red-letter day: Under court order to pay out the $1,050,000, he couldn’t do it. The money no longer was there.

The Pittsford attorney had begun dipping into the escrow account in 2009, according to information in the criminal complaint filed against him last September. He continued to take money from the account until April 2013, the complaint said.

The Jordanians appealed Rosenbaum's decision, which delayed the day of reckoning for Nojay. But in early August, the parties decided to abandon the appeal and settle the case. DeWolff would get everything in the escrow account and that would be the end of it.

Nojay was told to release the funds, which he'd told the parties totaled $1,054,160.

He dragged his feet, insisting that Rosenbaum issue another written order directing him to give the money to DeWolff. On August 11, Rosenbaum signed such an order.

“It was sent directly to Nojay via email," recalled Curtis Dehm, another of DeWolff’s lawyers in the case. "There was an email or two that went back and forth. The tone was ‘Yep, no problem.’”

But the money didn’t arrive.

Five days later, the other shoe dropped when Dreste received a telephone call from a lawyer who said he represented Bill Nojay.

The lawyer, Donald Thompson, hinted to Dreste that Nojay was in legal trouble and he made it clear his client would be unable to provide the $1,054,000 that was due to DeWolff.

But he could offer a partial payment of $700,000.

“That’s all there was. He said Nojay would do whatever he could to come up with the rest — someday,” Dreste recalled.

Did they want the $700,000? They weren't sure what was really going on, but they said yes.

‘The polygraph indicated deception’

On Aug. 16, the same day that Bud DeWolff and his lawyers learned the Jordanian money was missing from the escrow account, Nojay was told by the FBI that they believed he had stolen it.

Agents approached him and asked to speak to him about it. He refused and directed them to his lawyer, Thompson.

That both the civil suit and the criminal investigation came to a head at precisely the same time was, those involved now say, a complete coincidence.

Ultimately, Nojay met at least four times with federal authorities. Investigators presented him with evidence that showed he had transferred money from the escrow account to his own account and spent that money to satisfy his own needs and desires.

Nojay admitted his guilt, according to documents filed in federal court, and signed a written statement to that end.

He also agreed to cooperate with the FBI in their original, still on-going investigation of “public corruption," federal authorities said in court filings.

Those filings make clear the government wanted Nojay to provide evidence against others who were involved in the allegedly corrupt activities, which reportedly involved the school modernization contract or related matters. At one point agents asked Nojay to aid the investigation through “proactive cooperation” — shorthand for becoming an informant, perhaps even wearing a wire.

Nojay demurred, claiming “it would be difficult for him to do so without arousing suspicion,” one document reads.

Thompson, Nojay's attorney, is still vexed that the matter reached such a point, especially since Nojay was working to repay DeWolff. He said similar cases are often resolved through methods other than a criminal prosecution — with authorities settling the matter through a civil action and a disciplinary action against an attorney via a legal grievance committee.

"I think some people get special attention because of who they are," Thompson said. "Other people in the same circumstances don't get the same kind of treatment from the government. And, by treatment, I don't mean good treatment."

But those arguments held no sway. Nojay, long a strident political critic of state and federal government and what he saw as their over-reach, was under the FBI's thumb.

But he did resist in one way, authorities say — by shading the truth. In their court documents, authorities allege repeatedly that Nojay gave them untrue answers to questions about the corrupt activities they were looking into.

Still, in spite of their conviction that he was being untruthful, federal authorities made a decision that could have impeded that corruption probe and, in retrospect, appears unwise.

Nojay had used computers or phones to carry out his diversion of funds from the escrow account. Those devices may have contained evidence of the “public corruption” the FBI was trying to root out.

But instead of trying to obtain a subpoena to seize Nojay's computers, mobile phone and other digital devices, or accompanying him to his home or office to pick them up immediately, federal authorities agreed to let Nojay bring them to their office.

Two weeks later, he dropped off a single desktop computer. To their chagrin, agents discovered Nojay had used special software to erase all traces of emails and other data on the hard drive. Later, after Nojay's suicide, authorities did get a search warrant to seize a cellphone and another computer. It's not clear if other digital devices or stored data remain undiscovered — or what the devices contained.

Federal authorities claim that the scrubbed computer was not a setback.

"The assumption that the government had no knowledge of the contents of Mr. Nojay’s computer at the time he was asked to surrender it is a false assumption," Acting U.S. Attorney James P. Kennedy Jr. said in a statement responding to questions from the Democrat and Chronicle. Kennedy's statement did not address how investigators could have known the computer contents.

Also, Kennedy said in the statement, federal authorities were still trying to determine whether Nojay was sincere in claims that he would help with the investigation.

"Indeed, the government, fully aware of the evidence it had already had in its possession, made the investigative determination that asking Mr. Nojay to surrender his computer would aid in its assessment whether Mr. Nojay’s professed desire to cooperate was genuine," Kennedy said.

Not long after the scrubbed-computer episode, agents gave Nojay one more chance to tell them what they wanted to know. They hooked him up to a lie detector and gave him a lengthy exam, court records say.

Nojay allegedly flunked. “The polygraph indicated deception by Nojay with respect to certain details concerning the other matters under investigation,” a court document states. Confronted with this duplicity, he "refused to change his story."

That was the last straw. That night, Nojay was informed that a criminal wire-fraud charge would be filed against him. He was told to appear in federal court the next morning, Sept. 9. Nojay asked if there was a way to keep the charge from the public eye, and a federal prosecutor bluntly said no. He was told that "as a sitting Assemblyman, Nojay should expect substantial media coverage," court records say.

Thompson maintains that prosecutors wanted a dog-and-pony news conference to brag to the media and public about how they'd brought criminal charges against a prominent state lawmaker. Federal prosecutors have answered in court papers that they followed a standard protocol and gave Nojay ample opportunity to assist them and, in turn, himself.

Still, the evening before he was to turn himself in, late-night negotiations continued, according to court papers from Assistant U.S. Attorney John Field, the prosecutor on the case. During those talks, Thompson relayed an offer from Nojay to recruit "another person" to cooperate with the corruption investigation, Field wrote in court papers, but this offer did not change plans to criminally charge Nojay the next morning.

On the morning of Sept. 9, as lawyers and a federal magistrate waited at a courtroom in the downtown federal building, Nojay took his own life at the family plot in Rochester's Riverside Cemetery.

'Mr. Nojay is gone'

Slowly, in one court filing and judicial ruling at a time, details of the growing list of allegations against him have emerged.

Nojay had been a partner in a company with an ambitious plan to process and export rice from Cambodia. But the partners were accused of misappropriating a $1 million investment by a wealthy Phnom Penh dentist.

On Sept. 27, three associates were convicted of fraud in the case and later sentenced to a year in prison. The charges against Nojay were dropped because of his death.

But a civil action filed in Texas later last fall against Nojay's estate and his former associates alleges the $1 million disappeared after passing through Nojay’s lawyer escrow account in Rochester. No specific allegation has come to light that Nojay took any of that money, but not all of it has been accounted for.

The lawsuit is pending.

In December, a lawyer for the Democrat and Chronicle persuaded a federal judge to release the criminal complaint, sealed upon his death, that laid out the federal fraud charge against Nojay.

The complaint alleged that Nojay took about $800,000 from the escrow account.

What Nojay did with it has not been fully explained, though he seemed to have used the funds as his own personal piggy bank.

Nojay allegedly used an unspecified amount to pay property taxes on his home, an obligation on which he was chronically late. He gave money to his children, prosecutors say. And he used some to buy or repair a car.

He allegedly sent money to “entities in which he held a financial interest,” including $221,000 in November 2012 to support a business in Pennsylvania.

That likely refers to Wellsource Nutrition, which Nojay and another man started in October 2012 to buy an animal feed firm. The undertaking fell flat on its face and left Nojay’s estate embroiled in a multi-million dollar fraud suit in Philadelphia. A related $950,000 judgment has been filed in Rochester against Nojay and the other man.

An unspecified amount from the DeWolff account money was allegedly given to the unidentified lobbyist in Albany — and stolen money bankrolled Nojay’s successful run for a vacant state Assembly seat in 2012. The district includes Pittsford and three other Monroe County towns, all of Livingston County and part of Steuben County.

Another Republican, Richard Burke, had already announced his candidacy for the seat. Burke, a business consultant from Avon, said recently that he loaned his campaign $75,000, a large sum for an upstate Assembly race, in hopes of demonstrating the seriousness of his candidacy.

But Nojay jumped into the race and matched Burke's stake, contributing $75,000 to his own committee during the primary campaign. He used the money to flood mailboxes with glossy mailers, a tactic Burke chose not to match.

Nojay won the primary and, two months later, beat a Steuben County Democrat to claim the seat. He raised and spent about $120,000 overall, including $91,000 that he gave to his own campaign.

The FBI criminal complaint alleges that at least some of that money was stolen from the escrow account.

It was not until January that the Democrat and Chronicle learned of the civil suit stemming from the dispute over fees between DeWolff and the Jordanians — a dispute that dragged on for six years, during which time Nojay was able to help himself to money in the escrow account without fear of discovery.

When the suit was resolved in August, DeWolff was given $700,000 by Nojay with the promise that the balance due, $354,000, would come later.

DeWolff recently filed suit against Nojay's estate to recover that amount. As a back-up, he also filed a claim for that same amount with the Lawyers Fund for Client Protection, a state agency that compensates people who have been victimized by their attorneys.

Now yet another fraud accusation has come to light, one connected in a sad but all-too-real way to the DeWolff dispute.

Friend in need became another victim

This past August, as a Rochester judge was signing an order directing Nojay to turn over the $1 million to DeWolff — money that Nojay had pilfered long before — Nojay turned in desperation to another old friend.

That friend, Livingston County businessman Leslie Cole, loaned Nojay $700,000 the very next day. The money was placed in the escrow account Nojay maintained for his law clients, but Nojay wired it to DeWolff the following week, court records show.

Cole now says in court papers that he was defrauded, suggesting he made the loan to Nojay for reasons that turned out to be specious.

The benefactor who bailed out Nojay was, in fact, another victim.

Cole is an owner of Commodity Resource Corp., a successful Livingston County firm that leases bulk storage facilities to feed and grain suppliers. Nojay was counsel to the company. Through his lawyer, Cole declined to comment for this story.

After Nojay died, Cole learned from media reports that Nojay had been accused of embezzling money from the DeWolff escrow account, and feared the same thing had happened to him. In October, his lawyers obtained a court order to see the records of Nojay’s lawyer account. Those records verified that Cole’s $700,000 had wound up in DeWolff’s hands.

The lawyers have now asked Justice Rosenbaum, who also was assigned this case, for another order compelling DeWolff and Nojay’s estate to turn over records related to that fund transfer.

Cole's lawyers have also filed a claim with the Lawyer's Fund in Albany. Court filings say Cole also may file suit against Nojay’s estate and DeWolff for the return of the $700,000 on the grounds that DeWolff benefited from Nojay’s “fraud (and) breach of contract.”

Potentially then, two victims of Nojay’s embezzlement could square off in court over money that he stole from each of them at different times.

How did this all come to be? No one has stepped forward to admit they knew that a larcenous bent lurked behind Nojay’s often-affable countenance.

“All of this totally blindsided us,” said Robert Savage, who owns WYSL-AM, the Avon radio station where Nojay hosted a daily talk show for years. “We never saw any sign of it. We were like a small family. He’d come down here and laugh it up and yuk it up. All this other stuff, all of his business dealings, I literally knew nothing about them.”

Yet the facts give rise to the possibility that Nojay’s diversion of funds from DeWolff’s escrow account, the theft that brought on the criminal charges, may not have been a one-off.

That remains to be seen, after events in the courtroom have played themselves out, after the FBI finishes its corruption investigation and after yet another lawyer — Frank Iacovangelo — concludes his own inquiry.

Iacovangelo, a Rochester attorney, has a long-standing appointment as Monroe County’s public administrator. In that role, he administers the estates of people who die without a will or whose families and executors are not able or willing to carry out those responsibilities.

At the family’s request, he is handling Nojay’s estate.

Iacovangelo’s task will be to ferret out every bit of money to Nojay’s name, and to make sure his bills and legal obligations are satisfied as much as they can be.

It has fallen to him, more than anybody, to make sense of the former Assemblyman’s financial history and look for both hidden cash and undiscovered excesses.

“Right now I’m still doing a lot of research. I can only tell you that there’s a lot that we need to look at,” Iacovangelo said recently. “Mr. Nojay is gone. If we have questions, we have to put the pieces together ourselves to determine what really happened.”

SORR@Gannett.com

GCRAIG@Gannett.com

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TIMELINE OF EVENTS

October 2005: DeWolff begins work on Jordanian medical center, Nojay is escrow agent



August 2009: Contract renegotiated, signaling tensions



September 2009: Nojay begins to steal money from the project escrow account



April 2010: Jordanians instruct Nojay to withhold payment to DeWolff from the account



March 2011: DeWolff quits the project



November 2012: Nojay, his campaign funded by money stolen from the escrow account, is elected to state Assembly



April 2013: Nojay makes final diversion from escrow account



March 2015: DeWolff files suit asking to be paid $1.053 million from the account



May 2015: Justice Matthew Rosenbaum agrees to Nojay request to seal the case



September 2, 2015: A startup company bearing DeWolff's name, with Nojay as a silent partner, is chosen for a multi-million dollar Rochester school modernization contract



September 16, 2015: Approval of the new DeWolff company is withdrawn after another partner quits, claiming interference by Nojay



October 2015: The FBI begins looking into the school modernization contract. Through that probe they learn of the escrow theft



January 2016: Rosenbaum rules in favor of DeWolff, but defers enforcement while the Jordanians appeal



May 2016: D&C publishes an investigation of the school modernization contract and other Nojay business dealings. The FBI interviews DeWolff



August 9, 2016: Jordanians and DeWolff settle the case, agreeing the architect can have the $1.054 million thought to be in the escrow account



August 11, 2016: Rosenbaum orders Nojay, who has been dragging his feet, to release the money to DeWolff



August 12, 2016: Nojay borrows $700,000 from business associate and friend Leslie Cole, citing grounds that Cole later said were fraudulent



August 16, 2016: Nojay uses the money from Cole to make partial payment to DeWolff. Nojay is confronted by FBI agents, who inform him he is a target in a criminal fraud investigation involving the money he took from the escrow account



September 9, 2016: Nojay kills himself the morning he is to appear in court on fraud charges

Where to seek help

The Rochester Community Mobile Crisis Team provides immediate, 24-hour intervention for individuals and families experiencing a mental health crisis and can be reached at (585) 275-5151.

The American Foundation for Suicide Prevention’s Western New York chapter provides outreach to those who have lost a loved one to suicide, as well as educational programs and training. Call (585) 202-2783 or email westernny@afsp.org.

The National Suicide Prevention Lifeline can be called 24 hours a day at (800) 273-8255 or contacted online at suicidepreventionlifeline.org