CLEVELAND, Ohio — A prosecutor called former Cleveland radio host J.G. Spooner a “heartless con-man” minutes before a judge sentenced him to 30 months in prison in a series of scams that took advantage of complete strangers and the family of a dying friend.
Cuyahoga County Common Pleas Judge Brian J. Corrigan handed down the sentence after Spooner pleaded guilty to theft charges stemming from a months-long rent scam that he carried out while already under indictment for money laundering charges connected to a dying friend’s GoFundMe account.
Corrigan also ordered Spooner to pay more than $16,000 in restitution to eight victims of his scams.
“Everyone knew J.G. Spooner as a radio personality,” assistant Cuyahoga County prosecutor Edward Brydl told Corrigan. “But I don’t think anybody knew he was a heartless con-man.”
Spooner, a former host on Cleveland’s 92.3 The Fan, pleaded guilty Nov. 7 to taking more than $6,000 from a GoFundMe account set up Allyson Thadeus-Zappe, a woman he knew since elementary school who suffered from cystic fibrosis.
Spooner reached out to Thadeus-Zappe and her family in early 2015 and offered to use his celebrity status as a local radio host to make the account “go viral” and get more donations to help her family cover medical expenses, Brydl said.
Thadeus-Zappe and her family were excited by the prospect and agreed to accept his help. Spooner then changed the passwords the GoFundMe account and funneled the money from it into his own bank account instead.
Spooner spent the money as fast as it came in, Brydl said.
When the family asked where the money went and why there were no deposits coming into the fund, Spooner blamed it on GoFundMe, and sent the company emails threatening legal action. He copied Thadeus-Zappe’s family on those emails.
Thadeus-Zappe’s sister, Kathy Thadeus, called Spooner a “coward.” She said Spooner’s thefts caused her sister to spend her final weeks alive worrying about the money she planned to donate as part of her legacy, instead of enjoying the moments with her friends and families.
“You knew what you were doing, and what you did was wrong,” Thadeus said. “Your family should be ashamed of you. Your lawyer should be ashamed of you. This courtroom should be ashamed of you. But you should be ashamed of yourself. You deserve nothing.”
Spooner stole more than $8,500 from at least six other people who responded to a Craigslist ad to rent a home that Spooner did not own or have permission to lease. Some of the payments were made after prosecutors pointed out the scheme in court records.
One of the people who tried to rent the house, Kate Ahmed, worked at a downtown law firm. Her landlord sold the house she lived in, and she was given 30 days to find a new place to stay, Brydl said.
Ahmed scraped together $1,800 in deposits and rent down payments and found Spooner’s apartment online. When it came time to move in, Spooner told Ahmed that he would have to move back her move-in date by 30 days, leaving Ahmed no place to live with her three children.
Ahmed spent six weeks living in an extended-stay hotel, Brydl said.
Spooner returned the money when after Ahmed threatened to go to the police.
He used the same tactics to scam at least six people out of renting the home, Brydl said.
While Spooner was committing that scam, a friend of Spooner’s family let him work at a West Park bar to make money. Within weeks, he stole blank checks from the bar and wrote himself more than $6,500 in fraudulent checks, Brydl said.
Police and prosecutors opened an investigation into the second scams, and filed new charges against Spooner in January.
When the new charges were filed, Spooner became suicidal and checked himself into hospital, his attorney, Mark Marein, said.
Spooner’s grandfather, Joseph Donahue, was the First Assistant Cuyahoga County Prosecutor under longtime Prosecutor John T. Corrigan.
“For something like this, I can only imagine his grandpa’s rolling over in his grave,” Marein said.
Marein said Spooner was a 36-year-old man with a great career who threw it all away, and it left him and Spooner’s family “scratching their heads” as to how Spooner ended up in the courtroom Thursday.
Spooner issued a tearful apology to Thadeus-Zappe’s family, who sat in the back of the courtroom during the hearing. He said he had gotten himself into “a bad spot” and made a terrible decision, and that he was “ashamed and embarrassed.”
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