Did Conahan Sabatoge Judge Olszewski?

'Party' politics: Judge blames clash for photo's release

By Dave Janoski (Projects Editor)
Published: September 25, 2009

Special to Times-Shamrock Newspapers Luzerne County Judge Peter Paul Olszewski Jr., left, is all smiles during a party in June 2005 with Forty Fort attorney John H. Kennedy, convicted drug dealer Ronald Belletiere, then-county Judge Michael T. Conahan at a condominium in Florida. Olszewski, who is pursuing a second, 10-year term believes the photo was submitted to damage his retention campaign.

Luzerne County Judge Peter Paul Olszewski Jr. said a photo of him partying with a convicted drug dealer and former judge/accused racketeer Michael T. Conahan was leaked to media outlets Thursday to damage his retention campaign.

Olszewski said he was unaware of either man's alleged criminal activities when the photo was taken in 2005.

"It's obviously being done to embarrass me before the election," Olszewski said of the photo, which shows him, Conahan, the convicted dealer and a Luzerne County attorney holding drinks and liquor bottles in a Florida condominium that Conahan allegedly used to launder kickbacks in the kids-for-cash case.

In a tense, hour-long interview with The Citizens' Voice editors and reporters Thursday, Olszewski said he believes the June 2005 photo was mailed anonymously to the media by Conahan and/or his codefendant, former county Judge Mark A. Ciavarella Jr. to hurt his bid for a second 10-year term in November.

"If you publish this, you're doing Mark's bidding," Olszewski said. "You're doing what the most corrupt judges in the world want you to do."

Olszewski said he clashed with Ciavarella during Ciavarella's last months as president judge, before Ciavarella and Conahan were charged in the kids-for-cash scandal in January. Olszewski said he disagreed with a lawsuit Ciavarella filed against the county commissioners to stall proposed cuts in court staffing and other administrative decisions made by Ciavarella.

Olszewski said shortly after Ciavarella's arrest in January, Ciavarella left him a "rambling," angry voice mail message "castigating" him for comments he made to the media about Ciavarella's tenure as president judge.

Olszewski said three people have told him Ciavarella is still "seething" over the criticism.

Through his attorney, Al Flora Jr., Ciavarella said the accusation that he was the source of the photo was "absolutely not true." Conahan declined comment through his attorney.

The two former judges face racketeering, bribery, money laundering and other charges for allegedly accepting $2.8 million in kickbacks in 2003-2006 for helping two for-profit juvenile detention centers secure county contracts. Some of the money was deposited with a company controlled by the judges that owns the condo and falsely recorded as rental payments, federal prosecutors say.

Olszewski said he was unaware of the judges' alleged kickbacks scheme in 2005 when he was a guest at the condo for a golfing trip that lasted several days. He said he was also unaware that a visitor to the condo, Ronald Belletiere, was a convicted drug dealer, although Conahan told him near the end of the trip that Belletiere had been rehabilitated following a sentence for "minor" drug charges.

"If I thought Judge Conahan, who was president judge, was committing a crime, not in a billion years would I have been anywhere near him," Olszewski said. Olszewski said he was aware of allegations made in the 1990s that Conahan had ties to drug dealers, but a state Judicial Conduct Board investigation never yielded any action against the judge.

Conahan's name surfaced during Belletiere's 1991 federal trial in the "Empire" drug case involving cocaine trafficking in Hazleton in the 1980s, when Conahan was a magisterial district judge in the city. A government witness in U.S. District Court in Scranton alleged Conahan had put him in touch with Belletiere as a source for cocaine.

Conahan was never charged in the case, but during a "sidebar" conversation between lawyers and the presiding judge out of the jury's earshot, a prosecutor called Conahan an "unindicted co-conspirator" in the case, according to a transcript.

Belletiere and two other figures in the Empire case gave information about an unnamed "public official" to the state Judicial Conduct Board, attorneys in the case said in 1994, just months after Conahan's election to the Luzerne County bench.

In August 1994, Conahan held a press conference to deny he had referred anyone to Belletiere to buy drugs, but acknowledged knowing Belletiere. The conduct board has never confirmed that it investigated Conahan over the allegations.

Belletiere, who was released from prison in 1995, could not be reached for comment Thursday,

Olszewski said it was only in July 2008, when The Citizens' Voice reported that Conahan's wife, Barbara, owned an interest in a South Florida used-car business that Belletiere operated in 2004-2007, that he made the connection between Belletiere and allegations against Conahan in the Empire drug case. Olszewski said that by then, the federal investigation into Ciavarella and Conahan was public knowledge and he did not confront Conahan.

"I wanted to in the worst way, but what would be the point? Sometimes discretion is the better part of valor," Olszewski said.

Olszewski's account of the Florida trip was corroborated by John H. Kennedy, a Forty Fort attorney who was also on the trip.

Kennedy, Olszewski and their dates flew with Conahan and his wife to Florida aboard a private jet owned by Hazleton businessman Joseph Gans. Conahan had purchased miles on the jet as a present to his wife, Kennedy said. Efforts to reach Gans were unsuccessful Thursday.

Olszewski said he paid Conahan $400 for his own flight. Kennedy and the two women who accompanied them did not pay, according to Kennedy and Olszewski, who was estranged from his first wife at the time.

Kennedy said the 2005 visit to the condo, his first and last, was offered to him by Conahan after he supplied free legal representation to the county's court stenographers during a salary dispute with the county controller's office.

Kennedy said he was unaware of Conahan's and Belletiere's alleged ties to the Empire drug case.

"I did not connect the dots. I was not aware of the accusation of ties between him and Conahan," Kennedy said.

Olszewski, a former Luzerne County district attorney and the son of a former state Superior Court judge, said Conahan did a "terrible thing" by placing him in the company of a drug felon.

"The only relation I ever had with drug dealers was to prosecute them and as a judge to sentence them after they've been found guilty by a jury," Olszewski said.

"I had a father who was the most honest judge in the world. I thought all judges were like that. I was wrong."

Michael R. Sisak, staff writer, contributed to this report.

Source Standard Speaker.com

Federal Probe of Corrupt Judges includes Insurance Fraud

A constant refrain from disgraced Judges Conahan and Ciavarella has been the one that yes we made mistakes but we were not really criminals. The continuing and widening federal probe into both men shows the lie in that claim of "We are Not Crooks"

Yes you are!

Both Judges are criminals,fraudsters and con men, they have swindled and embezzled millions of dollars to enrich themselves. The costs are staggering in one of the worst and egregious cases of Judicial Criminal behavior in recent US History.

Eastern Pennsylvania Taxpayers paid thru the nose for kickbacks and perverted Justice, then there is the cost of irreparable damage to Juveniles wrongly jailed (Kids sold for Cash),citizens who expected impartial justice and were defrauded, and finally the public shame and lack of trust in what should be a pillar of any Western Civilization..

The Rule Of Law, The American belief repeatedly shattered that Justice is blind.

In this case Lady Justice had her hands in the till!




Uninsured motorist benefits award looked at amid judicial corruption probe.

source Times Leader
By Terrie Morgan-Besecker
Law & Order Reporter

WILKES-BARRE – An attorney for an insurance company that’s challenging a controversial $500,000 award of uninsured motorist benefits to a man confirmed that federal authorities have asked him to provide information on the case.

James Haggerty of Philadelphia said the U.S. Attorney’s Office asked for certain documents in the case of Forester Vanderhoff versus Harleysville Insurance after The Times Leader published a story on March 8 detailing the insurance company’s continuing efforts to overturn the monetary award.

“We were asked to provide some matters of public record,” Haggerty said.

The case is among numerous arbitration awards issued in Luzerne and Lackawanna counties that have reportedly been under investigation by authorities in an ongoing probe of alleged judicial corruption.

A source, who spoke on condition of anonymity, confirmed federal authorities are now investigating uninsured motorist benefit claims filed in both counties.

The Legal Intelligencer, a Philadelphia-based law journal, reported Friday that the U.S. Attorney’s Office had issued a subpoena to Harleysville requesting a wide range of information regarding uninsured and underinsured motorist claims originating from the two counties.

The article, which quoted unnamed sources, said the subpoena sought all records identifying the plaintiff’s attorney, the arbitrators appointed and the amount of the award or settlement in all uninsured and underinsured motorist cases from Jan. 1, 2003, to present that were heard in Luzerne and Lackawanna counties.

The Intelligencer said the subpoena also requested any records relating to internal or insurance industry investigations regarding uninsured motorist claims in the two counties, as well as a list of all cases in which the appointment of a neural arbitrator was filed.

Several attorneys have previously told The Times Leader that insurance companies for years have questioned whether there was impropriety in the handling of uninsured motorist cases in Luzerne County based on the disproportionately high-dollar awards being rendered by arbitration panels.

The subpoena reported by the Intelligencer is the first indication that authorities have expanded the probe to include Lackawanna County.

U.S. Attorney Martin Carlson declined comment Monday, citing his policy to neither confirm nor deny the existence of an investigation.

Uninsured motorist insurance allows a person injured by a driver who has no or little insurance to seek to recover damages from their own insurance company.

Disputes over the amount of money due are decided by a three-member arbitration panel consisting of three attorneys – one appointed by the plaintiff, one by the defense and a third, neutral arbitrator chosen by both sides. If the defense and plaintiff can’t agree on the neutral, a judge can make the appointment.

Cases in Luzerne County came under increased scrutiny in the wake of the corruption charges recently filed against former judges Michael Conahan and Mark Ciavarella, who have admitted accepting kickbacks in exchange for rulings that favored a juvenile detention center’s owner and builder.

Robert Panowicz, a Wilkes-Barre attorney who represented Erie Insurance for decades, said allegations are that some plaintiffs’ attorneys have been in collusion with one another and certain judges, resulting in the appointment of neutral arbitrators who are not truly neutral.

Panowicz said he was interviewed several years ago by a fraud investigator with the National Insurance Crime Bureau, an agency funded by insurance companies, but never heard back about the status of the investigation.

In the Vanderhoff case, Haggerty had challenged Conahan’s determination that Vanderhoff’s testimony regarding the existence of a third vehicle at a crash scene was more credible than that of the other driver and a police officer.

Vanderhoff acknowledged he rear-ended a car driven by Ryan Piontkowski at the Sans Souci Parkway and West End Road in Hanover Township on Oct. 4, 2001. Several months after the accident, he filed a report with Harleysville in which he claimed a third, “phantom” vehicle pulled in front of Piontkowski, forcing him to stop abruptly and leaving Vanderhoff insufficient time to brake.

That allowed Vanderhoff to seek to recover uninsured motorist benefits based on the argument that the “phantom” vehicle was uninsured.

The problem, Haggerty argued, is Piontkowski denied there was a third vehicle. The investigating officer, Sgt. Andrew Kratz, also testified that neither Vanderhoff nor Piontkowski mentioned the third vehicle when he was investigating the crash.

Despite that, Conahan ruled Vanderhoff had told the officer of the third vehicle. That allowed the case to then go before an arbitration panel, which awarded Vanderhoff $500,000.

In a an interview earlier this month, Haggerty said he was stunned by the fact Conahan believed Vanderhoff – the only person who had something to gain – over Piontkowski and Kratz, who were disinterested parties.

“It appeared to be at odds with the evidence and testimony presented to the court,” Haggerty said.

Haggerty appealed to the state Superior Court, which overturned Conahan based on a separate argument that Vanderhoff had not reported the phantom vehicle within the required time frame. The state Supreme Court later agreed to hear an appeal of that ruling. The high court has not yet ruled on the matter.