Attorney General Corbett announces criminal charges against former State Rep. Frank LaGrotta for hiring "ghost employees"
HARRISBURG - Former Pennsylvania State Representative Frank LaGrotta today was charged with two felony counts for hiring his sister and niece as legislative assistants in 2006 and paying them thousands of dollars in public funds for work which they never performed.
Corbett identified the defendants as former state representative Frank LaGrotta, 49, 777 Adams Ave, Ellwood City; his sister, Ann Bartolomeo, 46, 640 Crabapple Lane, Ellwood City; and his niece (Bartolomeo's daughter), Alissa Lemmon, 24, 115 Ada Drive, Ellwood City.
LaGrotta is charged with two felony counts of conflict of interests and Bartolomeo and Lemmon are each charged with false swearing for lying to the grand jury.
LaGrotta was a state representative from the 10th legislative district, which includes Lawrence County and parts of Beaver and Butler counties, from 1987 to 2007, and was defeated in the 2006 May Democratic Primary.
"This is a case of a public servant abusing his position of trust and power to financially reward his family members at the taxpayer's expense," Corbett said. "We allege that Frank LaGrotta hired his sister and niece on the state payroll and said they performed work that simply never existed."
Corbett said evidence of LaGrotta's ghost employment scheme was presented before a statewide investigating grand jury, which recommended that criminal charges be filed.
Ann Bartolomeo
The grand jury found that after LaGrotta's defeat in the May 2006 primary, he asked H. William DeWeese, Leader of the House Democratic Caucus, to authorize the hiring of his sister, Ann Bartolomeo, as a legislative assistant in his Lawrence County district office.
Corbett said since 1998 to the present, Bartolomeo has been a full-time elementary school teacher in the Ellwood City Area School District.
Although Bartolomeo applied for the position of legislative assistant on June 5, 2006, the grand jury found that the terms of her employment was antedated to Feb. 1, 2006, in an agreement signed by LaGrotta, DeWeese and Bartolomeo. The agreement stated that the Democratic Caucus of the House of Representatives agreed to pay Bartolomeo $1,932 based on a 37.5 work week.
The grand jury obtained an "Employee Payroll Information" document in which Earl Mosley, the House Democratic Caucus Personnel Director, authorized Bartolomeo to receive $19,329 effective June 20, 2006 and to revert to a regular bi-weekly salary of $1,932 beginning on June 21, 2006.
The grand jury obtained a June 20, 2006, email where LaGrotta notified the Democratic Caucus that Bartolomeo will be leaving his office effective June 30, 2006.
Bartolomeo told the grand jury she did archival work which involved sorting through 60 to 70 boxes of documents that LaGrotta had kept for 20 years in a storage facility called the Wampum Mines. She stated that at least half of the boxes contained PennDot drivers' license and vehicle registration applications and that she crossed out drivers' license and vehicle registration numbers and re-filed the applications chronologically.
Bartolomeo provided the grand jury with monthly calendars from February 2006 to June 2006 purporting to show the time she spent doing archival work. She stated that LaGrotta directed her to keep the calendars, even though she did not have an agreement to be paid by the state until June 2006.
The calendars Bartolomeo gave the grand jury showed that she only worked 37.5 hours during one week. Bartolomeo claimed to have worked a total of 451 hours, an average of 20.5 per week, which computes to an hourly wage of $46.29.
Alissa Lemmon
The grand jury found that LaGrotta's niece, Alissa Lemmon, was hired as a full-time legislative assistant on May 16, 2005, and was reduced to a part-time legislative assistant on Sept. 12, 2005.
Lemmon told the grand jury that on Jan. 3, 2006, she began employment as an administrative assistant to the executive director of Tourism and Cultural Heritage for the Pittsburgh Convention and Visitors Bureau.
LaGrotta notified the House Democratic Caucus that Lemmon "will be leaving me on Jan. 31, 2006." Although she was not working for LaGrotta, the grand jury reviewed payroll records that show that Lemmon was paid $1,131 on Jan. 16, 2006 and another $1,131 on Jan. 31, 2006.
On Dec. 27, 2005 LaGrotta wrote the House Personnel Office stating that Lemmon "has 10 unused vacation days and 11 accumulated comp days which she will be paid for."
Lemmon testified before the grand jury that she never kept track of her compensatory time or vacation time so she did not know how much she had accumulated or used.
An email obtained by the grand jury demonstrates that Lemmon was well aware that she was not entitled to vacation or compensatory time.
On Aug. 24, 2006, LaGrotta requested that Lemmon be rehired as a legislative assistant. The request was approved by House Democratic Leader H. William DeWeese, effective Sept. 12, 2006, for 20 hours a week at a salaried rate of $27.32 per hour.
LaGrotta notified the House Democratic Caucus on Sept. 14, 2006, that Lemmon would resign effective Oct. 10, 2006. She was paid $3,954 for this time period.
From September 12 through Oct. 10, 2006, Lemmon told the grand jury that she performed archival work for LaGrotta, similar to that of her mother, by crossing out drivers' license numbers.
Lemmon was paid $6, 216 in 2006 for work which she never performed.
Archival Work
The grand jury found that PennDot applications in Rep. LaGrotta's office were routinely destroyed in the district office after three to six months. The grand jury found that the documents that Bartolomeo and Lemmon claimed to have worked on did not exist.
Agents of the Attorney General's Office interviewed the manager of the Wampum Mines storage facility, which is the location where LaGrotta claimed to have stored the documents. The manager, who has worked there for 23 years, stated that LaGrotta never kept boxes at the storage facility and that because of its humidity, the Wampum Mines was ill-suited to safely store paper documents.
LaGrotta was asked by the grand jury to produce any and all documents worked on by Bartolomeo and Lemmon in 2006. Through his attorney, LaGrotta stated that certain of these documents were destroyed on Sept. 1, 2006 and all of the other documents were taken for destruction by Wright's Hauling on Nov. 30, 2006.
The grand jury found that LaGrotta hired Wright's Hauling on Sept. 1, 2006, and again on Nov. 30, 2006, however agents interviewed the owner of the hauling company who denied removing any boxes of paper documents on either date.
LaGrotta is charged with two counts of conflict of interest, a statutory felony, which each count carries a maximum penalty of five years in prison and a $15,000 fine. Bartolomeo and Lemmon are charged with one count each of false swearing, a second degree misdemeanor, which carries a maximum penalty of two years in prison and a $5,000 fine.
The defendants are scheduled to surrender on Thursday, Nov. 15, at 8:30 am before Harrisburg Magisterial District Judge Joseph Solomon, 1705 N. Front St., Harrisburg.
Corbett said that LaGrotta, Bartolomeo and Lemmon will be prosecuted in Dauphin County by Senior Deputy Attorney General Anthony Krastek of the Attorney General's Public Corruption Unit.
(A person charged with a crime is presumed innocent until proven guilty.)
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