LORAIN — City officials digging for documents to comply with an FBI subpoena have turned up additional paperwork on Alternatives Agency Inc., a Cleveland halfway house for parolees tied to an ongoing federal corruption investigation that began in Cuyahoga County.

The newly discovered documents include a letter from Lorain Community Development Director Sandy Prudoff, whose retirement takes effect today, to Alternatives’ former executive director Del Manning.

Prudoff was placed on paid leave earlier this month after the FBI informed city officials he was a target in the corruption probe. Along with Prudoff’s personnel file, a list of community development projects and the city’s ethics policy on outside contracting, the FBI also has requested anything the city had on Alternatives.

The recently found letter from Prudoff to Manning was found on a computer hard drive and dated July 14, 2005. Below the blank space for the signature is typed “Sanford A. Prudoff Director.”

“I would like to take this opportunity to advise you that I will need to complete my consultation services with your agency by July 31, 2005, due to other professional requirements,” Prudoff wrote in the letter before thanking Manning for “his close cooperation in my previous tasks.”

Prudoff also wrote that he hoped for the best for Alternatives and that he would “always be available by phone to provide you assistance of a general nature.”

Prudoff, who has not been charged, has acknowledged working as a consultant for Alternatives by scouting locations for the agency when it was interested in opening another halfway house in the Lorain area.

John Ricotta, Prudoff’s attorney, said the letter shows that his client had done work for Alternatives.

“It corroborates what he was doing, that he was trying to find these site locations,” Ricotta said.

Although Prudoff hasn’t been named in any court documents filed in the corruption probe, other Alternatives consultants have been charged and convicted.

Former Lakewood Mayor Anthony Sinagra, another Alternatives consultant, pleaded guilty to bribery and mail fraud charges. Prosecutors wrote in the Sinagra indictment that he and other Alternatives consultants didn’t do enough work to justify their fees.

Another former Alternatives consultant, J. Kevin Kelley, who is also a former Parma school board member and a worker at the Cuyahoga County Engineers Office, also has pleaded guilty in connection with a bribery scheme to funnel money to Alternatives, according to court documents in his case.

According to his indictment, Kelley worked with “Attorney 1” — who is widely believed to be Anthony Calabrese III, a former partner with the law firm Vorys, Sater, Seymour & Pease — and then-Alternatives Executive Director Brian Schuman in 2007 and 2008 to bribe Cuyahoga County officials to send county funding to Alternatives. Schuman also has pleaded guilty in the case.

The two men believed to be the top targets in the corruption investigation — Cuyahoga County Commissioner Jimmy Dimora and Cuyahoga County Auditor Frank Russo — have not been charged and have denied wrongdoing.

Calabrese also did extensive work for Lorain, including Prudoff’s department, along with his work as an attorney for Alternatives.

The city also found a letter from Calabrese, dated June 20, 2001, to now-deceased Lorain developer Michael Koury. Attached to the brief letter were copies of financial statements from Alternatives dated Nov. 30, 2000, and Feb. 28, 2001.

“As discussed, please find enclosed the financial statements for Alternatives Agency Inc. Again as a reminder, these must be held in strictest confidence and shown to no one,” Calabrese wrote in the letter.

Koury reportedly worked with Prudoff for Alternatives, and the two men have a history going back to the early 1980s when they were among those convicted in a housing scandal involving federal money. They, along with most of their co-defendants, later had their convictions overturned.

Prudoff, who was fired from the Community Development Department at the time, was later given his job back.

When Lorain officials first started looking for documents related to Alternatives, they found only a copy of a $4,000 invoice addressed to Manning from Prudoff for services rendered in February 2005 and a copy of a 2006 letter restricting where halfway houses could locate in the city. A Community Development Department file for Alternatives Agency was empty.

Contact Brad Dicken at 329-7147 or bdicken@chroniclet.com.

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