Coingate keeps on rollin'

The Republican party isn't doing well in Ohio. Pretty much every high-level state official has a connection to the Coingate scandal, they have the least-popular governor in the country, the president's approval rating is at 40%, and a representative, Jean Schmidt, just helped herself to $10,000 from Tom DeLay's ARMPAC-- under investigation for illegal fund raising and money laundering. Keep it up, fellas. There's nothing quite as pleasant as seeing a corrupt hypocrite hoist by his own petard.

A must-read piece from the Toledo Blade. It's all so juicy it was tough to pick an excerpt.

COLUMBUS — Tom Noe stole millions of dollars from the state and used a “Ponzi” scheme to fabricate profits within the state’s $50 million rare-coin investment, Ohio’s attorney general said yesterday.

“There was an absolute theft of funds going on,” Attorney General Jim Petro said.

Mr. Petro said there is evidence that Mr. Noe pocketed nearly $4 million in money invested with the coin fund through the Ohio Bureau of Workers’ Compensation since 1998. . . .

The attorney general said the theft began on March 31, 1998, the day Mr. Noe received the first of two $25 million payments from the workers’ compensation bureau, and continued until late May — more than eight weeks after The Blade first reported on April 3 that there were problems with the state’s investment.

“On Day One, Tom Noe took $1.375 million and put it in his personal or his business account,” Mr. Petro said. Records show that Mr. Noe immediately began using the state’s money for his personal use, the attorney general said.

A week later, Mr. Noe and his wife, Bernadette, made $4,500 in contributions to then-Secretary of State Bob Taft’s campaign for governor.