Ashton’s attorney is Jerome Ballarotto of Trenton, N.J.., a former federal prosecutor, Secret Service special agent and crime novelist whose website boasts that he stands between clients and “forces of evil.”

Ashton, 69, of Ocean View, N.J., hired the attorney recently amid a widening federal corruption investigation, first reported by The News, that is probing UAW joint training centers funded by all three Detroit automakers, according to sources familiar with the probe.

Ashton is the second high-ranking auto industry official to hire a criminal defense lawyer amid the widening federal investigation. Fiat Chrysler Automobiles NV CEO Sergio Marchionne has a criminal defense lawyer and has been questioned by federal investigators about a $4.5 million scandal.

Ballarotto did not respond to multiple messages seeking comment.

“This does indicate that there is some concern about criminal exposure,” said Peter Henning, a Wayne State University law professor and former federal prosecutor. “How much can you read into it? Whenever your name comes up in connection to an investigation, it’s best to hire experienced counsel.”

Federal investigators have subpoenaed documents in recent weeks from UAW training centers financed by GM and Ford Motor Co., and agents are interested in Ashton and Cindy Estrada, his successor in charge of the union’s GM department, the sources said. Ashton resigned Dec. 13 amid the federal probe and a related internal investigation conducted by the Jones Day law firm for GM.

The probe was spurred by corruption charges filed against a former Fiat Chrysler executive and the wife of a deceased union vice president this summer.

The investigation focuses on whether training funds were misappropriated, and if labor leaders at GM and Ford received money or benefits through their tax-exempt nonprofits — an allegation that emerged this summer involving Fiat Chrysler and General Holiefield, a former UAW vice president who died in 2015, sources said.

Four people, including former Fiat Chrysler executive Alphons Iacobelli and Holiefield’s widow, Monica Morgan-Holiefield, have been charged so far.

Ballarotto’s client roster includes John Bencivengo, the former mayor of Hamilton, N.J., who was convicted of taking $12,400 in bribes five years ago. He also defended the brother of New Jersey mobster John DiGilio in a gun case in 2011, and Florida resident Paul Toppino in a battery case.

“He’s a peacemaker and a deal-maker — that’s how I would put him,” said Toppino, 74, of Key West, who struck a plea deal in 2011. “That seems to be what he’s really good at: arranging pleas.”

Toppino became friends with the lawyer and said he often sees Toppino riding around in a Mazda Miata sports car or riding a motorcycle in Key West, where Ballarotto has a second office.

Toppino also has read Ballarotto’s book “Worthy of Trust and Confidence,” a novel about a fictional Secret Service agent, the assassination of John F. Kennedy, a “gorgeous” redhead, and the New Jersey mafia.

“He’s very smooth,” Toppino said. “I’ve got no complaints about him. Thankfully, I don’t need him anymore.”

rsnell@detroitnews.com

(313) 222-2486

Twitter: @robertsnellnews

HAMILTON — The U.S. Supreme Court has denied former Hamilton Mayor John Bencivengo’s petition for the court to hear oral arguments on his 2012 corruption conviction.

The Supreme Court justices met at a Sept. 29 conference to review thousands of cases and denied Bencivengo’s petition, revealing their simple one-word decision — “denied” — on Monday. According to the Supreme Court’s public information office, the odds were stacked against Bencivengo: Of the 10,000 cases filed with the court each eight-month term, only about 100 are granted review.

“The U.S. Supreme Court’s refusal to take the case is just an example of their interest in pursuing political agendas — the things politicians want to talk about — rather than legal matters that affect the little guy every day,” said Jerome Ballarotto, Bencivengo’s attorney.

“John Bencivengo is going to do eight more months in jail and survive. He’s going to do just fine, but it’s justice and liberty that have to pay the price,” Ballarotto said.

In November 2012, Bencivengo was convicted on charges of extortion, bribery and money laundering after he accepted $12,400 in bribes from his close friend Marliese Ljuba, the school district’s former health insurance broker who needed his help in retaining her lucrative school contract. Ljuba was cooperating with the FBI at the time, wearing a secret recording device and eventually testifying against Bencivengo as the U.S. Attorney’s Office’s key witness in the case.

Bencivengo is serving a 38-month prison sentence in Lewisburg, Pa., and is scheduled to be released in June 2015. Ballarotto said he has weekly email exchanges with his client, who he said has been a “model prisoner.”

“He’s looking forward to getting out and moving on. I don’t think he’s going to leave the (Hamilton) area,” Ballarotto said.
Earlier this year, the U.S. Third Circuit Court of Appeals rejected Bencivengo’s request for a new trial after ruling that, though he had no authority over the school board, the influence he wielded as mayor was enough to convict him.

“It is enough that Ljuba believed Bencivengo’s position gave him influence, and not ‘effective power,’ over the school board’s decision with regards to the insurance contract,” Judges Marjorie Rendell, Thomas Hardiman and Brooks Smith wrote in their April decision.

After the appeal was rejected, another request for all 14 Third Circuit Court appellate judges to hear the case was also turned down.
“The issues we raised in this case are talked about all over the country, in various circuit courts. When we did the research, we saw there was a lot of controversy,” Ballarotto said. “It’s not the ‘John Bencivengo’ argument, it’s the big argument.”

Bencivengo’s former community planning director Rob Warney, who helped mask the bribe money from Ljuba to Bencivengo, pleaded guilty to money laundering and testified against Bencivengo as part of the prosecution.He was sentenced to an 18-month prison term at federal correctional institutions in Pennsylvania and was released on home confinement in July.

See Jerry’s blog entry on this event

Orrie McNeill, who was arrested in 2004 on charges that he was planning to distribute a kilogram of heroin and used a handgun to carry out his business, got a 30-year reduction on his sentence last week from U.S. District Judge William Martini.

Martini ruled that McNeill should be offered a plea deal he had twice turned down — a third chance made possible by a higher court ruling.

McNeill’s attorney, Jerome A. Ballarotto of Trenton, said courts rarely grant prisoners’ petitions for new trials or sentences. But it’s “incredibly rare” for a federal judge to vacate such a sentence, he said.

“Obviously, he’s extremely happy,” said Ballarotto “He’s overjoyed, as he should be.”

The facts of the case, according to court records, are straightforward:

On June 3, 2004, Linden Police responded to a call for a possible domestic dispute at the Swan Motel. There, they found Julia Sanchez covered in blood outside McNeill’s room, saying she had fallen on a piece of furniture.

McNeill, also outside the room, fled from police but was soon captured.

According to court records, police saw blood on the outside of the motel door jamb and looked for other victims. Inside the room, they found heroin and a handgun. As McNeill awaited trial, police found more heroin and another handgun in a car connected to McNeill.

Eventually, McNeill faced charges related to both findings, as well as charges that he was a convicted felon and not legally allowed to possess guns.

But McNeill wasn’t a convicted felon; he had a misdemeanor disorderly persons charge on his record, court documents show. Without a felony on his record, McNeill could legally possess a gun.

When prosecutors offered McNeill a deal to admit to some charges, they included a charge that he was a convicted felon in possession of a gun. McNeill, court records show, told his lawyer he would take a deal, but not with the felon-in-possession gun charge.

However, McNeil’s attorney at the time, Robert DeGroot of Newark, was seeking to have charges should dismissed, because he thought the search of McNeill’s motel room could have been illegal.

McNeill rejected a second plea deal, which again included the gun-possession charge.

DeGroot later said that since the gun possession charge wouldn’t affect the length of McNeill’s sentence in a plea deal, he gave it little weight. That, the court would say later, was a mistake.

Deciding against the deals, McNeill and DeGroot went to trial in 2006, where McNeill was found guilty on all counts. The two drug charges brought a mandatory 10-year sentence and the two counts that he used the guns in his drug deals carried five- and 25-year sentences that had to be served after the term for the drug charges.

The prior felony issue was determined to be moot and McNeill’s sentence was imposed at 481 months, court records show.

In an initial appeal, U.S. District Judge William Bassler found that McNeill was not credible when he testified that he would have taken the 10-year plea deal if he had known that admitting to the felon-in-possession gun charge wouldn’t have changed the sentence.

Martini replaced Bassler for the remainder of the case in 2014.

Then came a ruling in the Third Circuit Court of Appeals, which found in a Pennsylvania case that a convicted drug dealer had a “reasonable probability” that he would have accepted a plea deal had he not been given incorrect information from his attorney about the plea deal.

The reasonable probability standard, Martini would find, is a burden of proof that is “quite low.”

And so, when Martini considered McNeill’s motion to reconsider his appeal, he now had the Pennsylvania ruling as a guide.

He vacated the remaining 25 years in prison McNeill was facing, on the “reasonable probability” that McNeill would have accepted the deal had he gotten the correct information from DeGroot.

He ordered the government to offer McNeill — who has been in prison for more than 10 years — the 10-year plea deal again.

It was a stunning turn of events for McNeil, who in a joint filing with prosecutors two days before Martini’s ruling, sought the court’s blessing for just a one-month reduction from his 40-year sentence.

Prosecutors on Monday wasted no time filing an appeal of Martini’s opinion to the same Third Circuit.

According to Ballarotto, McNeill will have to wait for an appeal decision before he could be released.

DeGroot, who called McNeill’s original sentence “draconian” and “absurd,” was willing enough to admit his mistake.

“There’s erasers on pencils,” he said. “If I make a mistake and somebody gets hurt, I’m glad to see it rectified.”

NEWARK – Renee Lamarre-Sumners walked slowly into a federal courtroom. Her steps were labored, her face gaunt, as her cancer-stricken body eats itself from the inside. It took all of the slight woman’s might to lug around her designer handbag as she settled down next to her attorney, Jerome Ballarotto.

The frail former Trenton municipal judge, who was ousted from the bench in 2010 amid disclosures of financial issues, spent the night before her Wednesday sentencing in a hospital, getting treatment. The doctors wanted to keep her but she said she couldn’t stay.

Now she sat in U.S. District Court wondering whether she would be sent to federal prison for extorting former clients who sought her help with immigration matters out of more than $17,000 over several years.

She faced a maximum 18 months in jail under a plea agreement negotiated between Assistant U.S. Attorney Mark McCarren and her attorney for posing as a fictitious official from the Department of Labor, demanding clients pay penalties to remain in the country or risk deportation. Her own attorney called her decisions “egregious.”

The judge was more strident.

“I don’t want this sentence to be misunderstood by the legal profession,” U.S. District Court Judge Stanley Chesler said. “Without blinking an eye, you’d be spending a year in jail” if it were not for her failing health.

Instead, Chesler ordered Lamarre-Sumners to serve a year of house arrest and five years of probation. She must repay $33,050 in restitution to her victims and cannot work in the legal profession in any capacity.

While New Jersey online attorney records show her license has been suspended. Lamarre-Sumners says she has surrendered her attorney license. As part of her sentence, she is also not allowed to work as a paralegal or provide legal advice while she is on probation.

“I can tell you what you have done has disgraced our profession,” Chesler said. “What you did was to make a mockery of the oath you took as an attorney. You used that opportunity to squeeze money out of [your victims].”

Ballarotto convinced the judge to spare his client from federal prison, saying it would be akin to a “death sentence” for a terminally ill woman suffering from a host of diseases.

The list of Lamarre-Sumners’ health complications includes lymphoma, seizures, a brain aneurism, a heart attack and an unspecified “neurological condition,” caused by her myriad bouts of chemotherapy and radiation, that contributed to the decision to bilk her clients,Ballarotto said.

The well-known defense attorney said his client’s conduct was “inexplicable,” considering her contributions to her community as an attorney.

Those impacted by the former Trenton judge’s decisions include Martha Franco Merino, an undocumented immigrant who sought out Lamarre-Sumners for help obtaining legal status in the U.S.

Merino was accompanied by her children to court. She spoke through a translator, recounting the pain Lamarre-Sumners’ actions wrought on her family.

“I had placed my confidence and trust in her in hope she would help me get my papers,” she said. “My children have been victimized. I had to sacrifice food” to pay Lamarre-Sumners’ fees.

“All of this has damaged my whole life,” Merino said.

Despite her anger, Merino said she felt bad for Lamarre-Sumners, wishing her well as she battles health problems.

“I hope the result may be a positive one,” Merino said.

For her part, Lamarre-Sumners was too weak to speak. She had her attorney read a statement on her behalf in which she apologized to her victims. She pledged to “pay back every cent” of restitution to her victims, whom she admitted she failed.

“I am so ashamed,” said Lamarre-Sumners, once a rising star in the legal community who had been appointed to the bench by now-convicted former Mayor Tony Mack. Now she joins him in the inglorious pantheon of convicted felons.

“You victimized the most vulnerable,” Chesler said. “What you did is simply horrendous.”

NEWARK – Renee Lamarre-Sumners walked slowly into a federal courtroom. Her steps were labored, her face gaunt, as her cancer-stricken body eats itself from the inside. It took all of the slight woman’s might to lug around her designer handbag as she settled down next to her attorney, Jerome Ballarotto.

The frail former Trenton municipal judge, who was ousted from the bench in 2010 amid disclosures of financial issues, spent the night before her Wednesday sentencing in a hospital, getting treatment. The doctors wanted to keep her but she said she couldn’t stay.

Now she sat in U.S. District Court wondering whether she would be sent to federal prison for extorting former clients who sought her help with immigration matters out of more than $17,000 over several years.

She faced a maximum 18 months in jail under a plea agreement negotiated between Assistant U.S. Attorney Mark McCarren and her attorney for posing as a fictitious official from the Department of Labor, demanding clients pay penalties to remain in the country or risk deportation. Her own attorney called her decisions “egregious.”

The judge was more strident.

“I don’t want this sentence to be misunderstood by the legal profession,” U.S. District Court Judge Stanley Chesler said. “Without blinking an eye, you’d be spending a year in jail” if it were not for her failing health.

Instead, Chesler ordered Lamarre-Sumners to serve a year of house arrest and five years of probation. She must repay $33,050 in restitution to her victims and cannot work in the legal profession in any capacity.

While New Jersey online attorney records show her license has been suspended. Lamarre-Sumners says she has surrendered her attorney license. As part of her sentence, she is also not allowed to work as a paralegal or provide legal advice while she is on probation.

“I can tell you what you have done has disgraced our profession,” Chesler said. “What you did was to make a mockery of the oath you took as an attorney. You used that opportunity to squeeze money out of [your victims].”

Ballarotto convinced the judge to spare his client from federal prison, saying it would be akin to a “death sentence” for a terminally ill woman suffering from a host of diseases.

The list of Lamarre-Sumners’ health complications includes lymphoma, seizures, a brain aneurism, a heart attack and an unspecified “neurological condition,” caused by her myriad bouts of chemotherapy and radiation, that contributed to the decision to bilk her clients,Ballarotto said.

The well-known defense attorney said his client’s conduct was “inexplicable,” considering her contributions to her community as an attorney.

Those impacted by the former Trenton judge’s decisions include Martha Franco Merino, an undocumented immigrant who sought out Lamarre-Sumners for help obtaining legal status in the U.S.

Merino was accompanied by her children to court. She spoke through a translator, recounting the pain Lamarre-Sumners’ actions wrought on her family.

“I had placed my confidence and trust in her in hope she would help me get my papers,” she said. “My children have been victimized. I had to sacrifice food” to pay Lamarre-Sumners’ fees.

“All of this has damaged my whole life,” Merino said.

Despite her anger, Merino said she felt bad for Lamarre-Sumners, wishing her well as she battles health problems.

“I hope the result may be a positive one,” Merino said.

For her part, Lamarre-Sumners was too weak to speak. She had her attorney read a statement on her behalf in which she apologized to her victims. She pledged to “pay back every cent” of restitution to her victims, whom she admitted she failed.

“I am so ashamed,” said Lamarre-Sumners, once a rising star in the legal community who had been appointed to the bench by now-convicted former Mayor Tony Mack. Now she joins him in the inglorious pantheon of convicted felons.

“You victimized the most vulnerable,” Chesler said. “What you did is simply horrendous.”

TRENTON — A federal jury on Thursday found a New Jersey Army National Guard soldier not guilty of sexually assaulting a female soldier during a party at Joint Base McGuire-Dix-Lakehurst last year.

Ioannis V. Karazoupis, 28, of Flemington faced life in prison if convicted. Yesterday afternoon, he walked out of the Trenton federal courthouse a free man.
Karazoupis’ attorney, Jerry Ballarotto, credited the jury with cutting through the emotion and focusing on the facts, a very difficult set of facts.

“This was a difficult case and it was just full of information and everybody’s interpretation of what happened” Ballarotto said.

Plus, the mere image of a young woman being sexually assaulted is horrifying,Ballarotto said. “I think the jury did a really good job. They focused on the facts.”
The alleged assault occurred May 4, 2014 in a barracks room as guard members partied and drank alcohol following annual exercises. The victim, an 18-year-old female guard member, was identified only by her initials, S.R.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Brandon Day had argued that the victim was so inebriated that she could not have given consent when the two had sex in her shared barracks room.Day alleged Karazoupis knew of S.R.’s altered state and went to her barracks room intent on taking advantage of the situation.

Ballarotto argued the sex was consensual, and took issue with the barracks doors, which automatically shut and lock. He elicited testimony from one witness that the doors could only be opened by a key or from the inside.

In his closing statements, Ballarotto said he suggested the victim knew the sex was consensual and blamed Karazoupis to protect herself from the military’s fraternization policies.

Ballarotto said he believes the jury found there was reasonable doubt in the victim’s version of what happened and many of the facts “just didn’t add up.”

Ballarotto said Thursday that the military took the victim’s side immediately and allowed the woman to proceed in her guard service, and a deployment, and her identity was shielded.

Karazoupis, meanwhile, was discharged from the military and had his name splashed around the media.

Now, Karazoupis wants his name and career back, Ballarotto said. “We’re going to continue to fight that battle.”

TRENTON – The difference between defense attorney Jerome Ballarotto inside a federal courtroom and outside of one is the difference between a wordsmith and a word sniper.

Outside the courtroom, the former Secret Service agent penned a novel about a Secret Service agent. While Ballarotto’s flair for fiction solidified him as a wordsmith, it’s probably not what made him worthy of the trust and confidence of New Jersey Army National guardsman Ioannis “John” Karazoupis, 28.
Ballarotto’s actions as a word sniper during the second day of his client’s sexual assault trial is most likely what did.

Karazoupis is accused of sexually assaulting an 18-year-old guardswoman May 4, 2014 while the two were at Joint Base McGuire-Dix-Lakehurst for training. He maintains the encounter was consensual while federal prosecutors contend the woman was blackout drunk and unable to consent.
The legal marksman’s pinpoint parsing of witnesses’ words Friday would have made Chris Kyle proud.

Ballarotto’s precision might be the difference for Karazoupis.

That the woman was inebriated doesn’t appear in dispute as FBI toxicologist Marc LeBeau testified he estimated the woman’s blood alcohol level at the time of the incident at .21, or nearly three times the state’s presumed level of intoxication. Several witnesses have bolstered this by saying they saw the woman drinking heavily in the hours before the assault.

LeBeau explained how people with those levels of alcohol in their system can experience anterograde amnesia. LeBeau compared it to a VCR and said the brain essentially fails to record events despite even if someone is still conscious. Ballarottowanted to know whether LeBeau could say for sure if that was the case here. LeBeau said that while the “classic signs of intoxication” could alert someone to the possibility another is blackout drunk, it might not be obvious to everyone. “You can’t say, as a scientist, ‘They blacked out,” LeBeau said.

Ballarotto’s nitpicking was more evident in his cross examination of guardsman Steven Grill.

Grill testified on direct examination Thursday he was with the woman, only identified in court by her initials, most of the day and watched her consume several alcoholic drinks. He said she had numerous shots of hard liquor while a group of people played a drinking card game inside a fellow guard member’s room.
Grill said when he decided to return to his shared 12-man barrack on the third floor of the barracks to take a nap, the woman followed him to his room.
Ballarotto wanted to know how the woman understood to follow Grill to his room if she was so inebriated. Grill shrugged. He wasn’t sure why anybody followed him up to his room, he said.

The attorney turned author also made a big deal about Grill’s word choice, pointing out the guardsman had testified before the grand jury that the woman appeared “alert.”

Ballarotto said Grill initially described to investigators the woman’s alcohol consumption as a “not a whole lot, but a decent amount” and described seeing her consume a “couple of shots,” not eight as he testified earlier.

Ballarotto then ratcheted up the intensity, asking Grill why he believed the woman choose to sleep in his bunk when several others were unoccupied. The twin-sized beds would have made it difficult for Grill not to notice the woman curled up next to him,Ballarotto said. “I sleep like a rock,” Grill responded.
Pointing back to Grill’s grand jury testimony,

Ballarotto challenged the guardsman over his characterization that Karazoupis was hounding him with questions about whether Grill had sex with the woman.

He contended his client wasn’t alone in posing “guy questions” and one of Grill’s superiors actually had to instruct the men to stop prying after Grill denied the two were intimate.

Ballarotto proceeded to press Grill about why he and another guardsman assumed his client had raped the woman when they decided to confront Karazoupis upon learning about the encounter. “He confessed to doing it,” Grill shot back.

Ballarotto nearly came unhinged, pointing at Grill and saying that while his client admitted having sex with the woman, he has adamantly denied sexually assaulting her.

The point, as Ballarotto hinted at in his opening statement, is others forced the word “rape” upon the woman to describe the encounter. He alleges federal prosecutors have done the same thing by bringing “outrageous charges” of sexual assault.

HAMILTON – Former township Mayor John Bencivengo could have picked anywhere to live after being released from prison.
But the 61-year-old ultimately chose Hamilton, the township he ran from 2007 until he resigned in 2012 due to his federal corruption conviction.
“I love Hamilton,” Bencivengo said Monday in his first interview since being released from custody on Friday. “My heart has always been here.”
The former mayor was convicted in November 2012 of taking $12,400 in exchange for influencing two school board members so that insurance broker Marliese Ljuba could keep her lucrative health insurance brokerage with Hamilton School District.

Beginning to serve his sentence of 38 months on May 30, 2013, Bencivengo was released early from a Pennsylvania federal prison due to good behavior.
He was initially transferred to a halfway house in Philadelphia in December after serving 18 months, then restricted to home confinement in February, which allowed for work release.

“I was able to get a job doing some bookkeeping and scheduling for a friend that owns a trucking company,” Bencivengo said of his current occupation. “My intention is to try to slowly get back into the community life and trying to see what I can do to contribute to the community the best that I can.”
Bencivengo is also in the process of writing a book about his life.

When shopping in Hamilton, Bencivengo said he feels good. “Whatever store I go in, people stop me and they say, ‘Welcome Back,’” he said. “It’s been a great feeling of acceptance here.”The general consensus when he runs into residents is they tell him he did a good job and that his administration helped turn the township around, Bencivengo said. “There has never been one bad spoken word to me in the community,” he said.
The former Republican mayor of a township controlled by the GOP said some from his party have reached out to him, some have not.
“That is their prerogative,” he said, noting Hamilton Mayor Kelly Yaede has yet to contact him. “Basically, I’m going to deal with that as I may. As time goes by, we will see what that brings. But for the most part, I’m living my life the best that I know how now in Hamilton.”

Bencivengo said he hopes the current administration follows the policies that he put in place, in addition to incorporating new ones that serve the people.
“The most important thing is when you’re in office: You have to remember that you work for the people, the people don’t work for you,” he outlined. “They pay you to do the job.”
Bencivengo declined to talk about the case against him. His attorney Jerome Ballarotto previously told The Trentonian the former mayor was his “most wronged” defendant ever.
While serving his sentence in prison, Bencivengo said it was difficult.

“It was tough because my entire life, I had a very clean record,” he said. “I never did anything wrong in my life. And this came along, and I never really experienced any kind of prison.” Bencivengo said it gave him a firsthand look of what happens to people that break the law and end up in prison.
“It’s not a pretty sight, I can tell you that,” he said. “It’s not a comfortable feeling. I really couldn’t wait to get home.”

In between his stint at the halfway house and home confinement, Bencivengo’s mother died in January.
“I miss her deeply,” he said. “I was hoping to come home to her and spend my home confinement with her. But it turns out, I ended up staying in here without her. It was a tough thing.”

Bencivengo will be on probation for three more years, but he hopes to extend his stellar prison record.
“In prison, that’s pretty hard to do,” Bencivengo said, noting a lot of things could go wrong. “I intend to continue that all the way through probation with hopes that I might be able to get an early release from probation.”

Bencivengo said he gave all he had when he was mayor.“I gave the best that I could give and I intend to continue giving and helping people like I did when I was mayor,” he said of the future. “The only place that I know where to do that better is here in Hamilton.”