Jimmy Dimora, the luau king

UPDATED with new Dimora charges below.

For decades, ever since the Kon-Tiki in the Renaissance Cleveland Hotel closed, Cleveland has suffered from a sad shortage of tiki culture, a dearth of Polynesian retro-kitsch. The Modern World couldn't make a go of it. The Bamboo House in Bay Village closed. So who'd have thought the South-Pacific-on-the-Cuyahoga revival would depend on Jimmy Dimora?

Yep, Dimora's backyard pool-party deck, allegedly built up with bribes, sounds sweeter with every new federal charge. Now the feds say Dimora got $1,076 for a fake palm tree and used it on a tiki hut instead.

I can't possibly improve on thatgirl's riffs on the news over at Cleveland Love. So I'll take this moment to total up the free-or-discounted swag allegedly built into Dimora's private paradise:

• Patio roof, barbecue shelter, bathhouse, value $60,000, from contractor Steve Pumper

• Brick walls for outdoor kitchen, masonry columns, pool retaining wall, value $25,000-$28,000, from construction contractor Nicholas Zavarella

• Granite in outdoor kitchen, from John Valentin of Salva Stone Design, portion of $3,000

• Refrigerator in pool area, value $1,150, from Ferris Kleem

• Tiki hut, value $1,076, from money manager Charles Randazzo

The luau king must've been a great party host. But when the Big D inevitably sells his little piece of tropicana in Independence to pay for his defense, who's the tiki-partying high-roller who'll snatch it up?

Update, 2:30 p.m.: What a coincidence -- the feds unsealed a superceding indictment of Dimora today with new charges and new news about Jimmy's backyard patio. Today we learn that the FBI thinks Dimora got the pool itself as a bribe!

A new defendant, Anthony Melagrano of Vandra Brothers construction company, is accused of:

• providing and installing concrete for Dimora's pool

• installing a basketball court and a concrete pad for an outdoor bathroom

• installing footers for the outdoor kitchen area.

In exchange, Dimora is accused of voting for Vandra Brothers to get county contracts. Dimora allegedly asked Melagrano for an invoice for the footers in May 2008 after Steve Pumper tipped him off to the FBI investigation.

Dimora faces a new RICO charge -- racketeering conspiracy. Prosecutors say he, former Frank Russo employee Michael Gabor, and others formed a criminal racket that committed bribery, extortion, mail fraud, and obstruction of justice. The new indictment includes a racketeering forfeiture claim. The feds now want Dimora to forfeit the entire cost of the free or discounted improvements to his house. I guess the pool party's over.

Oh, and to add insult to injury, the feds also want Dimora's autographed Beanie Wells jersey.

(Photo of the Kon-Tiki from clevelandmemory.org)

The Vegas trip, the prostitute, and the $38 million contract

Plenty of good stuff in the feds’ latest charge (pdf) against a Jimmy Dimora crony. First, 21 months after the FBI hauled it out of his house, we finally learn the significance of Dimora’s refrigerator:

Shortly before November 29, 2006, Dimora asked Kleem to purchase a refrigerator valued at approximately $1,150 and to have it delivered to the Dimora residence. … Kleem, through one of his companies, purchased the refrigerator and arranged for Blaze employees to deliver it.

(The blue quotes are from the prosecutors’ filing, with “Dimora” substituted for “PO1,” because we all know the feds’ code name for the un-charged Dimora by now. Kleem is contractor Ferris Kleem, charged with bribery conspiracy in federal court on Thursday. Around the same time as the fridge delivery, Dimora allegedly called a county employee and tried to get a grant to the city of Berea expedited at Kleem’s request.)

Next, our story takes the pulp-novel turn we all anticipated and feared. Keep reading if you dare.

On or about April 8, 2008, and during the Las Vegas trip, Dimora asked Kleem to hire a prostitute for Dimora. In response, Kleem paid a prostitute approximately $1,000 in cash and escorted the prostitute to Dimora’s suite at the Mirage for the purposes of providing services to Dimora. …

Dimora called back and asked, “I just said, she gives me a massage. Is that how we’re going to start her out?” …

At approximately 12:44 a.m., Dimora called Kleem and thanked him. Kleem asked Dimora, “Was that the best or what?” Dimora said, “Yeah, she’s good but a little chatty.” Dimora thanked Kleem, who said, “No problem, buddy.”

Dimora and Kleem then agreed to meet at 1:00 a.m. at the Chinese restaurant in the Mirage.

This is where Dimora’s defense gets really good. "If it was anything at all, it was exactly what he said it was it was: a massage, and that's not illegal," Dimora’s lawyer, Richard Lillie, told the Plain Dealer.

A $1,000 massage! Could this be what Dimora meant by, “I’m no angel, but I’m no crook”?

{Update, 5/1: Dimora tells Duane Pohlman he got a massage, not sex, and paid the woman himself. See this new post.}

Despite the ick factor, Dimora’s alleged Mirage encounter is (of course) the runaway hit from the Kleem charge, attracting airplay from PD cartoonist Jeff Darcy and less reputable news sources alike.

But sex can distract us from other, homelier sins. Let’s step back a page in the Kleem charges to see what’s happening in Cleveland while Kleem and Dimora are partying on the Strip: Kleem’s $38 million bid for a contract at the new juvenile justice center gets beaten out. As the feds tell it, when the bad news reaches the VIPs at the Mirage, Dimora hits the phones, looking for ways to disqualify the bidder who beat Kleem’s Blaze Building, putting in his last call in about 10 hours before the prostitute arrives.

If Dimora did try to nudge the contract to Blaze, it didn’t work: Blaze competitor Panzica, the low bidder, got the job. So when Dimora’s lawyer tells the PD, "Kleem received absolutely nothing from Mr. Dimora," that could well be true.

But Lillie’s job just got tougher. Looks like this is the story prosecutors want to tell a jury: Dimora tried to steer a $38 million contract to his friend the same day the guy bought him a hooker in Vegas.

(You can read the prosecutors' press release here and their charging document here.)

PD to FBI: Quit stalling and bring him in!

The Plain Dealer is tired of waiting to see if the feds indict Jimmy Dimora. Its front-page article today, "204 days & counting: Is probe lagging?" asks why no charges have been filed yet.

It's a weak story. Its impatience reminds me a little of Louis Seltzer's infamous Cleveland Press headline about the Sam Sheppard case: "Quit Stalling And Bring Him In!"

OK, the PD, unlike Seltzer, gets someone from an activist group to say, "Charge him or move on." Still, the paper knows the feds aren't done investigating -- the Parma schools were hit with a subpoena just two weeks ago -- yet it suggests the feds could just charge Dimora with something (anything!) now and figure out the rest later: "If prosecutors do charge Dimora, they could file one or two charges soon and then follow up with additional charges, which is common."

The paper asks why the feds can't move as fast as they did in their rush to charge now-impeached Illinois governor and hair freak Rod Blagojevich. Yet the story quotes U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald's explanation that he charged Blagojevich to stop him "in the middle of ... a political corruption crime spree" -- that is, to keep him from selling off a U.S. Senate seat. There's just no evidence that Dimora and Co. are about to pull off any swindle that big.

Yes, I know county officials and voters are stuck in a very awkward position. Even though the FBI is investigating Dimora, he's still making decisions on big issues such as the Medical Mart. Because Dimora hasn't been charged with a crime, only the Republican Party and The Professor have called for him to go.

But consider how long Cleveland's last big corruption case took to unfold. In December 2002, the FBI caught East Cleveland Mayor Emmanuel Onunwor on tape asking political fixer Nate Gray, "Did Santa Claus bring anything?" Agents confronted Onunwor outside Gray's Shaker Square office and found bribe money on him in March 2003. That was the start of the "overt phase" of the Nate Gray investigation (as the feds call it).

But the FBI didn't rush its case in order to get Onunwor out of office. They indicted him in April 2004, a year later. He remained mayor until his conviction that August. Gray was found guilty in August 2005 -- or 2 1/2 years after the investigation became overt.

The county probe is more complicated. It includes work done on Dimora and Frank Russo's houses, Russo's housemate, his son, his private real estate company, tax assessments, the Ameritrust Tower, the juvenile justice center, two judges, several contractors, worker's comp deals across the suburbs, the county's hospital and public housing, alleged ex-mobsters, casino chips, Dimora's refrigerator, a photograph of a now-deceased county employee/former strip-club manager/former radio DJ, and a note about a mysterious "$20,000 payment." Dimora's attorney estimates the feds are poring over 500,000 documents. Give them time!