10 minute read
News
Stenger Buddy Sentenced in Bribery Case Written by DOYLE MURPHY
When John “Johnny Roller” Rallo first met Steve Stenger in 2014, he told the future St. Louis County executive he was sick of giving politicians money and getting nothing in return. All that changed with the crooked entrepreneur’s introduction to the corrupt politician at a south-county steakhouse. In the years since, Rallo’s generous campaign donations were rewarded with government contracts he had no business winning, easy access to the most powerful figures in county politics and, finally, a federal prison sentence of a year and five months.
Advertisement
Rallo, 54, pleaded guilty in July to three counts of honest services mail fraud/bribery and was sentenced last week during a hearing that was packed with friends, family and reporters.
“I offer my wholehearted and sincere apologies to all who were harmed,” Rallo said in court, reading from a prepared statement.
He was once a key operator in the pay-to-play scheme that toppled Stenger and members of his inner circle in 2019. The case unfolded in stunning fashion last spring when the now-former county executive was indicted and then resigned and swiftly pleaded guilty to the same charges as Rallo. Stenger is now serving a little more than two years at a federal prison in Yankton, South Dakota.
The case also brought down Stenger’s chief of staff, Bill Miller (fifteen months in prison), and former county economic development CEO Sheila Sweeney (probation), upending county government.
Of the four indicted in the case, only Rallo was still waiting to be sentenced. A former nightclub owner, he had opened an insurance business called Cardinal Creative Insurance and hoped to buy his way past the bidding process for a contract for county employees’ benefits.
His pitch began at that first meet
Written by DANIEL HILL
John Rallo was sentenced to federal prison for bribing ex-St. Louis County Executive Steve Stenger. | DOYLE MURPHY
ing in 2014 at Sam’s Steakhouse.
“The relationship was corrupt from the beginning ...,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Hal Goldsmith wrote in a sentencing memo.
Stenger, then a councilman, was running for county executive and was eager to help, given that Rallo was offering to become a loyal donor to his campaign. Rallo paid for dinner and slipped Stenger a $5,000 check. Over the next four years, the jet-setting businessman would wine and dine the brash politician repeatedly, lining up other donors and arranging fundraisers.
For his part, Stenger repeatedly tried to guide the benefits contract to Rallo but was stymied by county employees who insisted on routing Cardinal Creative Insurance’s pitch through the normal bid process. To appease his financial benefactor, Stenger and his cronies came up with other illicit moneymakers, steering a pair of industrial properties to Rallo and awarding him a bizarre consulting gig, paid through the port authority.
Rallo created a new consulting company solely for that contract, offering to bring in his buddy, former talk show host and payday loan pitchman Montel Williams, to help boost the county’s post-Ferguson image.
The six-month $100,000 renewable contract was worth less than the $350,000 Rallo wanted, but he took it anyway, lazily filing made-up progress reports so thin that Sweeney, who ran the port authority, had to work with him to make them appear at least passably legit.
In court, defense attorney John Rogers pleaded for lenience for Rallo. His client has five kids and wide support from family and people in the community. Rogers noted the humiliation the case and media attention had caused his family. People avoided Rallo’s parents at their church, his kids were upset by what they read on the internet and Rallo had retreated from the shame to Utah, where he and his family live in relative isolation, Rogers said in court.
“I know these [consequences] pale to what other people suffer, but they are real and relevant,” Rogers said.
U.S. District Judge Richard Webber pointed out this wasn’t a case of a onetime mistake by a businessman who found himself in the midst of a corrupt situation. Webber cited that first meeting in which Rallo told Stenger he was sick of paying politicians for no benefit. Rallo’s push for illegal deals continued steadily for years.
In the case laid out by federal prosecutors, Rallo was caught in texts badgering Stenger to make deals for him in between fundraisers. The court documents describe breakfasts at the Ritz-Carlton, dinners at 801 Chophouse and drinks at Cafe Napoli. All the while, Rallo was playing the role of the money man, the deep-pocketed entrepreneur looking for a return in taxpayer-funded contracts.
As part of his sentence, he’ll have to dip into his pockets one more time to help pay $130,000 in restitution. One difference: This time, Stenger and Sweeney will have to split the bill with him, sharing the restitution among the three. n
At least he’s smiling. | COURTESY UNIVERSITY CITY POLICE
Gotham is evidently safe once again as of last week, when a man clad in a fairly convincing Joker costume was arrested in the Delmar Loop and charged with making “terroristic threats” in the first degree.
University City police say that University City resident Jeremy Garnier, 48, was arrested at about 8:15 p.m. March 2 in the 6500 block of the Delmar Loop following reports of a disturbance involving a man in a costume.
“The caller(s) further advised the suspect was making threats via the Facebook Live app and streaming the live video feed,” a University City police statement reads. “After officers searched the area, the suspect was taken into custody, without incident for various violations.”
Garnier’s video, which appears to have been taken down, showed that he was in Blueberry Hill at the time of his arrest.
“I don’t drink alcohol,” Garnier tells a bartender upon ordering a Sprite. “I can’t be inebriated when I’m planning on killing a bunch of people.”
While that seems damning, friends and supporters of Garnier claim that it was all a misunderstanding and have launched a GoFundMe to raise money for an attorney.
“He was in full makeup and costume as The Joker and was entertaining his followers by acting like The Joker,” the campaign’s description reads. “The video is Continued on pg 11
Craze: The Coronavirus Written by DOYLE MURPHY
St. Louis County warned the father of the first local coronavirus patient last week it would seek a court-ordered quarantine for him and the rest of his family if they refused to stay in his Ladue home.
The family had promised to selfquarantine after the twenty-yearold woman returned last week to St. Louis from Italy and began to show symptoms of the disease known as COVID-19, according to county officials. But County Executive Sam Page said at a news conference on Sunday they had learned the woman’s dad had taken his younger daughter — the patient’s little sister — to a fatherdaughter dance on Saturday night at the Ritz-Carlton in Clayton.
“The patient’s father did not act consistently with the health department’s instructions,” Page said at the news conference. “Instead, last night he decided to take his other daughter to a school function.”
The younger daughter is a student at Villa Duchesne, and classes were
‘JOKER’ Continued from pg 9
on his Facebook wall. Someone reported mistakenly that he was making ‘threats’ when he was only playing a role. He is being held at St. Louis County jail charged with making ‘terroristic threats’ and given no bond. While this was undoubtedly not Jeremy’s best decision considering the consequences...he was not threatening anyone.”
The video itself seems to bear that out. At about an hour long, it begins with Garnier in what appears to be a private residence, dressed in a purple suit with clown makeup on and generally acting very Joker-y. From there, he gets into a car and drives to the St. Louis Galleria, where he wanders around talking to employees and shoppers alike, noting that some 2,000 people are watching him on his feed.
Within a fairly brief time, police approach Garnier and begin to question him, saying they’d received a report that he was making threats. Garnier claims that’s not the case and that he’s a performance artist, and the shoppers he was speaking with when police approached St. Louis County Executive Sam Page speaks about COVID-19 at a February news conference. | COURTESY ST. LOUIS COUNTY
canceled for the week at both Villa and Oak Hill School out of “an abundance of caution.” The two private Catholic schools share a campus in Frontenac.
It wasn’t just the dance. The county later learned the father had gone to a
seem to back him up. An officer tells Garnier that he’s not allowed to be in the mall with face paint on, and Garnier agrees to leave.
From there, he drives to Blueberry Hill, telling his viewers about Joe Edwards. Upon arrival, he is asked to show ID, which he doesn’t have, but he persuades a worker to let him inside, where he sets about filming Edwards’ wall of photos and a Simpsons display case.
It’s shortly after his seemingly in-character remarks about “killing a bunch of people” that police arrive and put Garnier in cuffs. “It’s hard being sexy,” Garnier says of the day’s police attention. “It comes with a cost.”
Garnier was charged the following day with terrorist threats in the first degree, and a judge ordered him held without bond.
“This is an extremely serious felony charge,” writes Glenda Volk, the woman who launched the GoFundMe. “I’m asking for your help so I can retain an attorney to get Jeremy a psych evaluation to show he truly is not a threat to society and to hopefully get a bond and get these charges dropped or at least reduced. I will be eternity grateful for any help.” n
coffee shop on Saturday morning, and he and his youngest daughter went to a pre-dance event at the home of friends that evening. That set off another round of potential exposures. The house the father and daughter visited belongs to a family with a student at John Burroughs School in Ladue. A “handful” of Burroughs seniors visited the house later, according to an email sent on Sunday by Burroughs Head of School Andy Abbott.
The school remained open, and it’s unlikely the seniors were infected, Abbott wrote. “Still, under an abundance of caution, we have asked them to stay home from school until we have more information.”
The twenty-year-old coronavirus patient is a student at Indiana University and had been studying abroad in Italy, where COVID-19 has wreaked havoc. She flew into Chicago O’Hare International Airport on March 2 and stayed with friends in Chicago before returning on March 4 to St. Louis by way of an Amtrak train. She first noticed her symptoms and reported them to the county health department on March 5. She was tested at Mercy Hospital, according to the county.
Page said she seems to have done everything right, self-quarantining as soon as she suspected she might be sick and following all instructions from the county health department and Center for Disease Control and Prevention. Page said she had reacted “remarkably, maturely, responsibly” to contain the virus. The father was a different story.
“The way the family has reacted to this situation is really a tale of two reactions and the tale of how people should and should not react to the coronavirus,” Page said.
The twenty-year-old woman was notified on Saturday evening that she had tested positive. Her father and sister had apparently left for the dance before learning on the diagnosis, but Page said the family had been told to self-quarantine since the first contacts. Only the twenty-year-old has shown any symptoms.
An attorney for the family told the St. Louis Post-Dispatch that the county had not told all the family members they had to self-quarantine. But Page and a county health official said the instructions for the family to stay home were clear and they were given multiple times.
In response to learning about the dance, the county sent a letter warning it would seek a court order to force the family to stay in their home if they would not self-quarantine.
Page urged anyone else who experiences symptoms of the coronavirus to quarantine themselves.
“Stay in your home,” Page said. “Stay in your home.”
