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

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.”

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.”

Prosecutors on Thursday dismissed all child molestation charges against former Key West police officer Henry Florentino Arroyo. The state charged Arroyo, 42, in March 2014 with two charges of second- degree felony lewd and lascivious exhibition of a child younger than16 and one count of lewd and lascivious molestation of a child younger than 12 last year. He was facing life in prison if he had been convicted of the last charge.

“The (alleged) victim’s parents requested the state discontinue the prosecution of this case, because the parents believe it is in the child’s best interests,” reads a court document filed by Assistant State Attorney Val Winter. “The guardian ad litem (a child’s legal advo- cate) appointed to represent the child’s best interests concurs with this request.”

Arroyo’s lawyer, Jerry Ballarotto, declined to comment.

“Although we may want to prosecute offenders, parents have their children’s best interest at heart,” said Monroe County State Attorney Catherine Vogel. “These parents have decided it is in the best interest of their child to discontinue this prosecution and we have been unsuccessful in convincing them otherwise.”

Winter declined to comment on the case and Vogel declined to comment further.

Arroyo was released from Monroe County Detention Center on Stock Island on March 24, 2014 after posting $100,000 bail after his arrest. Arroyo was placed on paid administrative leave on Dec. 17, 2013 pending the outcome of a joint criminal investigation by the Florida Department of Law Enforcement, the Department of Children and Families and the State Attorney’s Office.
He resigned from the force on Feb. 6, 2014.

Whether Arroyo will re- apply for his job with Key West police was not clear Thursday.

“To my knowledge, Henry Arroyo has not applied,” said Key West police spokeswoman Alyson Crean. “If he does, the decision will be considered at that time, according to the hiring process of the department.”

Arroyo had been working as the school resource officer at Key West High School, but was removed from that position when he was placed on leave. Arroyo also was a former board member for the Police Athletic League (PAL) — a police-oriented juvenile program that uses sports and recreation as a crime-prevention tool.

There was never any evidence or allegations in court records that alleged any criminal activity by Arroyo within either of those organizations.

alinhardt@keysnews.com