End of 'Coingate'

“Boneheaded” just doesn’t quite cover it.

Crooked would be better. Or dishonest. How about criminal?

Boneheaded is when you lock your keys inside your car. What Terrence Gasper, former chief financial officer of Ohio’s Bureau of Worker’s Compensation did was a lot more like stealing a car.
Gasper, who described his actions to a judge as “boneheaded,” received five years and four months in a federal prison Thursday for accepting bribes in exchange for steering millions of dollars of agency investments to favored companies. This was at the center of the state corruption scandal commonly referred to as “Coingate” because one of the key players was Toledo coin-dealer and Republican fundrais-er Tom Noe. One of the bribes Gasper took was $25,000 from Noe. The scandal made Ohio a national joke and is widely attrib-uted with helping the Democrats take over most of the statewide offices.

Noe is now doing 18 years for stealing from a $50 million state investment he managed. Federal prosecutors originally hoped to get Gasper ordered to repay $13 million, the amount the state lost in Noe’s rare coin deals, but the fines eventually were knocked down to about $60,000.

So far 16 people have been convicted in the associated scandals, which ranged from the $300 million lost by the bureau to the misdemeanor non-contest plea then-Gov. Bob Taft made for failing to report free golf outings and gifts on his financial disclosure forms.

Gasper “was the rot at the core of the apple,” according to one prosecutor. His federal sentence will coincide with five years he has to do in state time for similar charges. He could have gotten up to 20 years, but got off easy in exchange for testimony against others in the scandal. Maybe he wasn’t such a bonehead after all.