CLEVELAND, OH – While it’s a duty of the director of finance of a municipal corporation to report to the legislative authority about the condition of its finances, Charles Efosa Iyahen kept his mouth shut about the more than $1 million in fees and fines his clerk of court wife stockpiled in an East Cleveland municipal court office safe for over three years. State officials learned from me on February 28, 2023 that Iyahen and Judge William Dawson’s clerk of court, Wendy Jonelle Howard, were married in 2022. She’s now Mrs. Wendy Jonelle Iyahen.
The quiet Las Vegas wedding occurred on July 29, 2022 in Clark County, Nevada. Records filed with the Clark County Clerk of Court shows their marriage certificate was issued on August 1, 2022.
The relationship adds the element of a conspiracy to the misappropriation of public funds that has become the norm under Dawson. Iyahen was personally motivated to say nothing to council, the Ohio Auditor of State and the Ohio Attorney General about his wife and Dawson’s criminal “dereliction” for failing to discharge the fiduciary duties of their public offices. Howard’s continued employment benefits Iyahen’s household.
According to conversations and correspondence between state and city officials, Dawson was instructed by Ohio Auditor of State David Yost in 2018 to transfer the funds Howard collected to the finance director no later than the 15th of each month. Iyahen was director of finance when the instructions were given to Dawson and Howard.
For the next five years King’s top fiscal officer refused to deliver council monthly reports showing Dawson and Howard’s continued dereliction. Instead, Iyahen and Howard eventually began dating before cementing their relationship in marriage last July.
Prior to Dawson’s election in 2011, daily court cash collections were traditionally transported to a bank by an armoured car carrier and an armed guard. Since Howard helped Dawson win his 2011 campaign, their chronic mishandling of the cash he appointed her to collect is well-documented by state oversight authorities and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI).
On September 6, 2018, Dawson and Howard’s decision to let his administrative assistant and yoga partner, Laura Smith, take $17,977 to the bank resulted in a staged robbery. Smith posted social media pictures of herself, Dawson and his wife together in Las Vegas.
On December 2, 2022, East Cleveland Financial Planning & Supervision Commission Chairwoman Barbara Mattei-Smith repeated the Auditor of State’s 2018 warning to Dawson when she demanded the court’s collection and bank records. State authorities had learned that Iyahen still hadn’t received or reported receiving any money from the Dawson court for the past 3 to 5 years.
Instead of Dawson supplementing the court’s payroll and expenses with the funds he appointed Howard to collect as fines and fees, Mayor Brandon King appears to have, without protest, completely paid the court’s operational costs with general funds. Dawson’s dereliction created an annual general fund shortfall that obstructed the mayor and council’s duty to finance municipal services and pay bills.
Had Iyahen discharged the finance director’s duties, he would have been demanding that his wife deliver the funds she was hoarding and concealing by the 15th of each month. Even as the woman he loved, Iyahen was empowered to use the director of finance’s authority to guide Howard into compliance to protect her from criminal liability for her dereliction.
The more than $1 million the court clerk concealed in an office safe represented about 3 years in undeposited court fees and fines the finance director never advised the council his wife had not turned over. Because Dawson and Howard stockpiled the cash, there are no bank deposit records to reconcile with collections, deposits, expenditures and withdrawals. Some of East Cleveland’s bank accounts are interest bearing. Dawson, Howard and Iyahen’s individual dereliction obstructed the city’s ability to earn the extra dollars.
Dawson has to reconstruct receipts of payments defendants made to Howard; and that’s only if she issued and recorded them. An investigation of Dawson’s case files will determine if his court has retained jurisdiction over Americans who’ve paid their fines and fees he should have released. The FBI should investigate if arrest warrants have been entered in the National Crime Information Center (NCIC) and LEADS criminal records history databases for unpaid fines and fees Dawson’s clerk failed to document.
Mattei-Smith told me after the February 28th meeting she didn’t know the finance director and clerk of court were a married couple. The commission meeting was over. Mattei-Smith and her colleagues had just been informed by Dawson, during his report, that it wasn’t his job to oversee the management of the court clerk’s office. He described it as a “separate office.”
The alibis Dawson and King offered for the derelict acts of their appointees is their interactions with the court clerk and finance director were not of an oversight nature. Each, as if rehearsed, claimed they only learned of financial deficiencies when they were “told.”
Dawson deflected his authority onto the commission, assigning to them the responsibility to let him know when they learn his employees are negligent so he can correct them. King echoed similar thoughts.
Dawson left the meeting claiming his wife had been hospitalized. The judge’s departure avoided his being reminded that he continued not to deliver the court’s collections to the city; even after being warned of his dereliction five years ago by the Auditor of State in 2018.
Dawson’s act of throwing Iyahen’s wife under the bus, with his false and obstructive separate office claim during an official proceeding, sought to distract from the evidence of his criminal “dereliction” in discharging the oversight duties of his elected office. Dawson is the presiding and administrative judge of the East Cleveland Municipal Court. The Supreme Court of Ohio gave administrative judges the duty and authority to account for and audit the clerk of court’s accounts.
Rule 4.01 – Powers and Duties of Administrative Judge, Ohio R. Superi. Ct. 4.01 (“(G) Develop accounting and auditing systems within the court or division and the office of the clerk of the court that ensure the accuracy and completeness of all required reports”).
Dawson’s served two, six-year terms as East Cleveland’s municipal court judge. That’s 12 years since his 2011 election with Howard’s help. It’s the equivalent of a child entering the 1st grade and graduating after completing the 12th. The only difference is the books that contain the federal, state and local statutes Dawson is required to obey and enforce don’t change with each year like they do for students.
The duties assigned to judges in Ohio Rules of Superintendence of the Courts have been the same for the past 12 years. Dawson should have mastered them all by now.
There’s no excuse for Dawson not to know court receipts are deposited daily in a bank and not a safe in the clerk of court’s office. It’s inconceivable he has to be repeatedly warned to deliver the city its money, and the supreme court its reports, no later than the 15th of each month. If he’s this negligent in handling administrative duties, particularly as it pertains to cash, defendants and their attorneys have every right to question Dawson’s negligence towards their constitutional and statutory rights.
Dawson’s been warned, repetitively, that neither Willa Hemmons nor Heather McCullough were administered oaths of office to discharge the duties of law and deputy law director since 2015. Hemmons’ two-year contract expired in 2017. Its one year extensions were never requested by the mayor or approved by a resolution of council. Both are private attorneys with no statutory authority. Dawson and his magistrate allows them to appear in court as private attorney prosecutors in violation of Section 2938.13 of the Revised Code.
Dawson’s also been provided with evidence that private citizens impersonating law enforcement officers without valid Ohio Peace Officer Training Academy credentials are arresting American citizens and bringing them before his court. Dawson knows the director of law’s office Hemmons has usurped was vacated by an ordinance of council in January.
Instead of demanding compliance between the separate government branches they oversee, Dawson functions as if he and King have a pact to remain silent about each other’s statutory and fiscal law violations. The performance they delivered at the commission meeting, complete with a cast of supportive residents called in for backup, came off like a scheme they concocted to sell their “we didn’t know” alibis.
The state should investigate the husband and wife’s payroll records. Mrs. Iyahen appears to have become ill after investigators from the Attorney General’s office recently questioned her about the more than $1 million in court cash she, Dawson and her husband concealed from city and state officials.
East Cleveland’s financial planning and supervision commission should exercise its authority to refer the city’s derelict officers for criminal prosecution. When King told the oversight authority his interaction with the city’s finances was “distant,” and that he didn’t learn of fiscal problems until late, it was an admission he was not obeying and enforcing the state and city’s fiscal laws as a duty of the mayor. Section 113A of East Cleveland’s charter gave King the following duties to discharge.
The Mayor shall at all times keep the Council fully advised of the financial conditions and needs of the city and shall recommend to the Council such measures as he or she may deem necessary or expedient for the safety and welfare of the city and shall submit to the Council the estimate provided for in Section 60 of the Charter.
King’s alibi devalued anything he has to say, and has said, about the status of East Cleveland’s finances. No mayor who’s lawfully paying attention to the city’s bottom line is silent for 3 to 5 years while a municipal court judge fails to deliver the revenue they’ve collected. The fiscally responsible mayor wants that money deposited to the general fund to cover the judicial payroll and expenses.
He’s also not going to be silent while his finance director covers for a clerk of court who happens to be his wife.
