Attorney Brendan Delay informed the Geauga County Maple Leaf Nov. 6 his client, Ali Pascal Mahvi, did not report to the Geauga County Safety Center for food stamp fraud.
Instead, Delay said he filed an appeal with the 11th District Court of Appeals the morning of Nov. 6.
In his docketing statement, Delay said he is asking to make an oral argument in either Geauga County or Lake County and be assigned to the regular court of appeals calendar with a full briefing.
Although Mahvi, 66, of Russell Township, was supposed to report to the safety center Nov. 4, he does not have to be in jail while an appeal is pending.
Geauga County Court of Common Pleas Judge Forrest Burt sentenced Mahvi Oct. 27 to 30 days in jail and three years of community control for welfare fraud. He was convicted on Sept. 16 of accepting more than $8,300 in food stamps, a felony, and for giving false or misleading statements when applying for Medicaid for his family, a misdemeanor.
He, his wife and adult children live in an 8,000-square-foot home with 15 rooms on more than 7 acres on Shire Court in the Red Raider Trails subdivision of Russell Township. Mahvi told the court his business failed and he was destitute and depending on loans from friends.
He was also charged with two counts of grand theft, but the judge acquitted him of those charges because of a lack of solid accounting evidence.
In his ruling, Burt said testimony from a forensic accountant would have been good to have.
Geauga County Prosecutor Jim Flaiz addressed the filing of the appeal in an email to the Geauga County Maple Leaf.
“I firmly believe Judge Burt reached the right verdict with respect to the food stamp fraud. The evidence at trial clearly showed that the defendant was untruthful, as his conversation with the food stamp worker was recorded,” Flaiz said.
However, hiring a forensic accountant was not fiscally justified, he said.
“With respect to the issue regarding the forensic accountant, in every case, I have to balance the conservative use of government resources against obtaining convictions,” he said. “In a perfect world, we would have a forensic accountant look at every fraud case.
“In this case, the cost of a forensic accountant would’ve likely greatly exceeded the amount of food stamps the defendant was accused of improperly receiving. We believed that we could still obtain a conviction without that unnecessary cost to the taxpayers, and, after trial, the defendant was found guilty,” Flaiz said.
