ELYRIA — Eighteen months ago, a former employee of North Shore Door Co. in Elyria sat down at a computer and typed out an e-mail that sparked a massive probe into the way the Garfield Heights Division of the Ohio Department of Transportation did business.

That probe — conducted by Tom Charles, the state’s inspector general, and released Thursday in a 69-page report — revealed an intricate web in which state workers allegedly rigged bids and steered contracts to friends and associates in exchange for alcohol-fueled fishing trips complete with lap dances.

The name of the whistleblower isn’t included in the report. But the name of North Shore’s owner, Mark O’Donnell of Elyria, is all over it, earning 24 individual mentions, with North Shore mentioned another 21 times.

So who is O’Donnell? Well, for all practical purposes, he’s an enigma in the area. He’s not a member of either Main Street Elyria or the Lorain County Chamber of Commerce, and local city officials say they don’t know him or haven’t worked with him.

No one was at O’Donnell’s business or his Elyria home on Friday.

The first complaint
After the April 2, 2007, e-mail to ODOT’s District 12 office accusing ODOT employees of accepting gratuities from North Shore, the e-mail’s author followed up by calling ODOT’s chief legal counsel and accusing O’Donnell of submitting inflated bills, billing for unnecessary work and hosting annual “ODOT Boat Day’’ trips on Lake Erie during which O’Donnell allegedly took the division’s facilities manager, Dennis Kratochvil, fishing.

That prompted the Office of the Inspector General to get involved, and after interviews and an ODOT audit of its North Shore bills, the office found that North Shore was reimbursed for approximately $84,000 in questionable costs between January 2006 and April 2007 alone, according to the report.

The findings were enough to warrant a wider probe, and the inspector general looked at a decade’s worth of business transactions between more than 30 ODOT vendors and the ODOT division, which employs 450 people and has an annual budget of $49 million.

The investigation’s results, which led to seven people being fired or resigning, have been turned over to the Cuyahoga County Prosecutor’s Office. Whether criminal charges will follow isn’t known.

Ryan Miday, a spokesman for Cuyahoga County Prosecutor Bill Mason, said his office provided limited aid to the Inspector General’s investigation, but it will now review the results for possible charges.

“They are turning (their files) over to us, and we’re going to review it, and if we find anything criminal, we’ll submit it to a grand jury,” Miday said.

In addition, it is not known how far-reaching the probe was, but allegations against public officials tied to the investigation have been forwarded to the Ohio Ethics Commission.

Jennifer Hardin, chief advisory attorney for the Ethics Commission, said she couldn’t discuss which public officials’ names have been turned over to her office because of confidentiality laws.

O’Donnell’s connection
O’Donnell, according to the report, had an in with officials in the Garfield Heights division of ODOT.

At the heart of the give-and-take relationship O’Donnell allegedly had with Kratochvil and with Equipment Superintendent Terrence Kosmata were annual boating day trips, accompanied by strippers from the Cleveland area, according to the report.

 The report said O’Donnell would meet Kratochvil, Kosmata, other ODOT vendors and three to five strippers at Huron Yacht Club or Bass Haven Marina in Marblehead, where they would depart for a day of drinking, swimming and frolicking on Lake Erie aboard O’Donnell’s 36-foot Tiara yacht.

The report also said that O’Donnell partook in Kratochvil’s annual Christmas party for preferred vendors at the strip clubs Crazy Horse and Cleveland’s PM, a strip club located 1.3 miles from the ODOT office that Kratochvil was said to often frequent. The vendors, according to the report, left hundreds of dollars in cash to cover drinks, food and lap dances after such parties.

The money dropped at those parties, the report said, was in exchange for the more than $660,000 in business that Kratochvil gave to O’Donnell’s business. At one point, O’Donnell even gave Kratochvil $800 in cash as a partial payment for furniture that Kratochvil purchased for a stripper at Kronheim Furniture Co. in Cleveland, according to the report.

Also as a tradeoff, O’Donnell gave Kratochvil and Kosmata price breaks on the purchase and installation of garage doors, the report said. In addition, O’Donnell helped Kratochvil’s son, Dennis B. Kratochvil, obtain a discount on the purchase of six garage doors and operators from the Overhead Door Corp.

The doors were installed in 2006 at the junior Kratochvil’s business, DeBord Plumbing, Heating & Cooling in Chardon, by O’Donnell’s employees, using North Shore Door vehicles and equipment, the report said.

That business came two years after Overhead Door sued North Shore in Lorain County.

Kratochvil, in turn, rewarded O’Donnell — letting him charge excessive amounts for labor, assess ODOT a fuel surcharge and bill for travel time, in addition to purchasing off-contract products, the report said. O’Donnell’s contract with ODOT specified a $30 per hour charge for labor, but in some cases he allegedly billed — and was paid with Kratochvil’s OK — up to $92 per hour for labor.

The report notes that the overbilling was “perhaps the most flagrant,’’ and references an alleged incident in which Kratochvil asked O’Donnell in 2006 to find a large quantity of small window clips called glass keepers.

Records show that O’Donnell bought 400 of the off-contract items for 75 cents a piece and resold them to ODOT for $2.78 each.

O’Donnell, saying he was giving Kratochvil a 10 percent discount, billed ODOT $1,000.80 for the transaction, the report said.

“Not only was the sale usurious, but Kratochvil failed to obtain a second bid,’’ the report noted.

Second local tie
Another local business, West Shore New Holland Inc. in North Ridgeville, also is mentioned in the report as a vendor, selling ODOT tractors and other large equipment.

The report said that West Shore New Holland did $33,366 in business with Brenden Builders Inc., a construction firm operated by Kratochvil and his wife. Brenden made improvements at West Shore’s office in North Ridgeville and at a home owned by its president, Craig L. Gorsuch, in Berea.

In one transaction between the companies, Kratochvil issued Gorsuch a phony invoice, billing West Shore $1,078 for a roofing job in 1999, the report said. The money was actually Gorsuch’s payment to Kratochvil for a Benelli 12-gauge shotgun that Kratochvil wanted to be reflected as a business expense, according to the report.

In at least one incident, West Shore didn’t benefit from its ties to ODOT. The report said Gorsuch was looking to purchase a plasma cutter, so ODOT Equipment Superintendent Kosmata secured a bogus quote from another ODOT vendor and then told Gorsuch that he could get it at a cheaper price. That’s when Kosmata took ODOT’s plasma cutter, which hadn’t been entered into the ODOT inventory system, and sold it to Gorsuch for $2,864, according to the report.

A late-afternoon attempt Friday to reach someone at West Shore was unsuccessful.

Low local profile
While Elyria Mayor Bill Grace said he should know all of Elyria’s businesses, he doesn’t know O’Donnell, and O’Donnell has had no dealings with the city. North Shore Door has received no money from the city, nor is it a company the city has worked with, said Auditor Ted Pileski, who keeps records of every person or business that receives city funds.

North Shore also never worked for Lorain County, county officials said.

County Common Pleas Court records show that North Shore has been sued several times by Ohio-based companies accusing O’Donnell and North Shore of not paying for materials or services.

In 2005, Ameritech Publishing sued North Shore Door for $36,534.64 for unpaid Yellow Pages advertisements. Months later, a judgment was issued against North Shore Door ordering payment plus interest.  In addition, Overhead Door Corp. obtained a judgment against North Shore in 2004 for $26,367.

The Cheap Escape Co.  also sued North Shore Door for unpaid advertising totaling $20,956.47 that was placed in JB Dollar Stretcher home mailings. Cheap Escape later dropped the lawsuit.

Other court filings against North Shore Door included cases brought by Ohio Department of Taxation and the Bureau of Workers’ Compensation.

Staff writer Brad Dicken contributed to this report.
Contact Lisa Roberson at 329-7121 or lroberson@chroniclet.com.

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