The culture of corruption is alive and well in Montgomery County

Today the Ohio Attorney General made it official: Robert Matthews, Fiscal Officer of Miami Township, is now the subject of a formal removal action in Montgomery County Common Pleas Court. The case was filed under 2025 CV 05367 and seeks to have Matthews ousted from office for his reckless, unlawful handling of public funds.

The complaint recounts how Matthews attempted to withdraw $9.7 million from the township’s STAR Ohio account and wire it to private coin dealers to buy gold coins, a transaction that would have added another $382,000 in fees and even annual storage costs for the coins. He acted unilaterally, without trustee approval, in direct violation of both Ohio law and Miami Township’s own investment policies, policies Matthews himself had voted for years earlier as a trustee.

The Attorney General is now asking the court to immediately suspend Matthews from entering the fiscal officer’s office and ultimately to permanently remove him from office. The complaint also seeks restitution of public funds and costs.

Matthews has a long record of questionable conduct. He quit township office once before to take a job with a township contractor, only to run again later. Now, with this fiasco, he has already cost taxpayers tens of thousands in legal and investigative expenses.

The Matthews filing also highlights a broader issue: Montgomery County voters have been here before. Just last year, Clerk of Courts Mike Foley was indicted, yet he sailed through re-election despite the cloud over his office. Voters cannot afford to be fooled again.

Foley Updates

My own Quo Warranto filing against Mike Foley is still pending. In that case, the visiting court of appeals has now ordered me to brief the issue of standing before the merits can be heard. Foley’s plea deal, a deal that was both unlawful and sealed from public view, remains one of the most brazen examples of local corruption and judicial complicity. Standing means your right to file- and the question of who is supposed to enforce the law, when the elected people won’t do it (Mat Heck, I’m looking at you again).

And inside that case, more fallout: Foley defense attorney Jon Paul Rion has parted ways with his associate Catherine Jackson, who is now with Bieser Greer, one of Dayton’s premier litigation firms. Word in the legal community is that Rion tried to blame Jackson for the “bad deal” that produced Foley’s illegal plea arrangement. That excuse didn’t save Foley, and it shouldn’t save Rion either. Jackson moved up in the world considerably.

A Pattern of Corruption and Evasion

The Matthews gold coin scandal and the Foley plea deal are not isolated incidents, they are symptoms of the same rot. Officials act with impunity, their lawyers cut deals in back rooms, and taxpayers foot the bill. Whether it’s millions nearly wired away in gold coin speculation or a plea bargain that never should have existed, the cost to public trust is staggering.

Montgomery County residents deserve better than fiscal officers who treat township accounts like personal gambling chips, or clerks of court who get to keep their job for over a year since being indicted on 12 counts- and making a bone-headed, illegal plea deal.

And the public must keep asking hard questions of the lawyers, judges, and officials who enable this culture of corruption.

Matthews must go. Hopefully, the state moves fast enough to guarantee Matthews can’t be elected to the trustee position he’s running for- and hopefully, voters know better.

As to Foley, more delays are just putting money in his pocket- and costing me time and energy playing a lawyer on TV. The real question is why County Prosecutor, the State’s AG office who has been prosecuting Foley didn’t initiate removal when they could.

And, on another note, I’ve had multiple victims of the court system contact me with absolutely unbelievable judicial travesties – after they’ve read other articles on this site, including the stories that exposed local lawyer Aaron Hartley as a bad actor,and the coverage of the Keith Wright hearing, as well as multiple people who’ve had horrible experiences with Judge Jonathan Hein (Foley’s judge). If I didn’t have a day job, you’d have lots of reading to do.

And lastly, I don’t know why Sydney Dawes of the Dayton Daily newsless didn’t report the one way screaming match last week between Board of Elections director Jeff Rezabek and County Commissioner Mary McDonald outside a county meeting in Clayton. Dawes told me her iPhone battery was dead, but I heard someone has video- and that the two sheriffs deputies who came and separated Rezabek from McDonald may have had their body cams on. Rezabek was in shorts and a t-shirt, and was livid with McDonald that she wasn’t going along with his expensive plan to move the Board of Elections out of the basement of the County Building elsewhere. If you have video of this, the public wants to see it.