The name of the Democrat mayor of Dayton, also a gubernatorial candidate, was included in recently released documents from a 2013-2014 FBI investigation which resulted in four people going to jail.

Nan Whaley is the mayor of Dayton and a candidate for the Democratic nomination for governor of Ohio.

“In the documents, the agents told the judge that a controller for demolition company Steve Rauch Inc. — which pleaded guilty last year to a charge of conspiracy to engage in mail fraud regarding subcontracting work — said in recorded phone calls with another company official that Whaley accepted cash bribes from Rauch on multiple occasions,” according to a report in The Ohio Capital Journal.

Whaley herself was never charged with a crime, and responded by noting that investigators cleared her during the course of their inquiry.

“These seven-year-old claims are baseless and categorically untrue,” Whaley said in a statement. “In the course of federal investigations into illegal activity in Dayton, unfounded claims were made against me. Investigators did exactly what they should do: thoroughly looked into it and found nothing.”

The information was made public via search warrant request, which were recently unsealed.

In those documents, the FBI alleged that a man named Willis Blackshear Sr. worked as a go-between for Whaley, then a mayoral candidate and Dayton city commissioner, and Dan Feucht, the controller of Steve Rauch Inc. The alleged bribes were exchanged for city contracts.

“What he [Blackshear] does is he acts as the intermediary, so Nan [Whaley] doesn’t have to come out here,” Feucht reportedly said in a conversation recorded by the FBI. “You know the City of Dayton Commission doesn’t have to come out here. So he [Blackshear] does all the running. He comes out here and collects all the money.”

Feucht also directly implicated Whaley by saying she was “very much so” in on the deal.

After the statement denying the allegations of wrongdoing, Whaley’s gubernatorial campaign sent out a research document that also disputes the allegations, and says Whaley never had contact with Feucht. It also says she was never contacted by the FBI as part of the investigation.

– – –

Pete D’Abrosca is a contributor at The Ohio Star and The Star News Network. Follow Pete on Twitter. Email tips to [email protected].
Photo “Mayor Nan Whaley” by Mayor Nan Whaley.