© 2024 Ideastream Public Media

1375 Euclid Avenue, Cleveland, Ohio 44115
(216) 916-6100 | (877) 399-3307

WKSU is a public media service licensed to Kent State University and operated by Ideastream Public Media.
Play Live Radio
Next Up:
0:00
0:00
0:00 0:00
Available On Air Stations
News
To contact us with news tips, story ideas or other related information, e-mail newsstaff@ideastream.org.

BWC Worker Caught In Financial Scheme

Donald Gooch worked out of the Garfield Heights BWC office. And Assistant Inspector General Joe Montgomery says Gooch was creating “bogus financial instruments and letters” on his state computer “through a scheme for debt elimination and tax avoidance. And he was doing it for himself and others, and spending a significant amount of state time and resources engaging in the practice.”

Montgomery says Gooch printed out about 4,000 pages of documents. “One was mailed to an attorney in Cincinnati on behalf of a credit card company," he says, "and it was a bogus money order that he created to try to pay his own personal debt.”

Montgomery says Gooch was part of the so-called Redemption Movement, a group based on a conspiracy theory about the US government and social security numbers. The report recommends discipline by the state and was forwarded to the Internal Revenue Service and prosecutors.