When state prosecutors first showed Matt Brakey, chairman of a powerful association of heavy-duty electric buyers in Ohio, a longstanding contract apparently in his organization’s name that investigators uncovered in a bribery probe, Brakey saw only one explanation. 

His mentor and his lawyer, a man who in 2019 was named a senior state regulator by the governor until FBI agents raided his Columbus residence in October 2020, had been stealing from Brakey and his peers for years. 

“It was a shock,” Brakey said in Summit County Court of Common Pleas on Friday, where he was called as a witness for the state. “When we found this document, there was no rational explanation for this other than him misappropriating funds from the organization.”

Brakey is president of an energy consultancy started by his father, Brakey Energy, and the chairman and member of what was formerly known as the Industrial Energy Users of Ohio, an influential group of large-scale electricity users that leverage their scale for better prices in cases before the Public Utilities Commission of Ohio. He testified on Friday into Monday afternoon about how IEU Ohio was victimized by Sam Randazzo, its lawyer and founder. 

Catch up from the beginning of the FirstEnergy corruption trial here.

Randazzo opted against retirement from his legal career in 2019 to accept an offer from Gov. Mike DeWine to serve as chairman of the PUCO. That’s about the time the prosecutors say the alleged $4.3 million bribe changed hands. 

But the money transferred within the broader context of a highly technical and regulated utility sector, animated by sophisticated actors with specialized expertise and in some cases trying to cover their tracks, all making for a convoluted set of accusations and explanations. 

From his seat at the PUCO, Randazzo set the agency’s regulatory agenda in establishing Ohioans’ electric prices and utility companies’ profits, and allegedly bent the agency in FirstEnergy’s favor. 

Randazzo resigned in 2020 after the FBI raid and subsequent allegations of a bribe made statewide news. In 2023 and 2024, he was accused by the federal and state government respectively of accepting a $4.3 million bribe. 

But a lesser-publicized element of the state’s case against Randazzo is the alleged theft of millions in settlement proceeds of money from FirstEnergy intended for IEU Ohio’s members – Randazzo’s old legal clients, including companies like Marathon Petroleum, Timken Steel and Brakey Energy. According to prosecutors, this transpired over nearly a decade before DeWine appointed Randazzo. 

Randazzo died by suicide before he was tried. But ex-FirstEnergy CEO Chuck Jones and ex-senior vice president of external affairs Mike Dowling are on trial on accusations of conspiring with Randazzo and paying him a bribe. 

Consulting contract

Over the first of what’s expected to be as many as 10 weeks in a crowded courtroom in Akron, lawyers for the two executives have mounted a defense arguing that the $4.3 million wasn’t a bribe. 

Rather, it was a lump-sum payment, paid five years early, to close out remaining payments due to Randazzo from a settlement agreement from 2015 between FirstEnergy and IEU Ohio. However, that settlement agreement is memorialized in a consulting contract between Randazzo’s company and FirstEnergy, defense lawyers say. 

Brakey said he never saw any 2015 consulting contract between FirstEnergy and Randazzo’s company at the time, even though it was intended to settle a legal dispute involving IEU Ohio, according to the defense. The contract never mentions IEU Ohio, and names only FirstEnergy and the Sustainability Funding Alliance, a company with no employees that’s owned by Randazzo. 

The 2010 document that shocked Brakey had transferred assets of IEU Ohio’s to two of Randazzo’s companies: the Sustainability Funding Alliance of Ohio, and the “IEU Ohio Administration Company,” which despite its name, was a secret to Brakey that had nothing to do with IEU Ohio. 

The prosecutors say the consulting contract is a sham concocted to pay off Randazzo to get his IEU Ohio clients to back down in a regulatory fight against FirstEnergy. They’ve emphasized that Brakey never saw the document, and that it doesn’t even mention the relevant PUCO case number of the docket it settled, or IEU Ohio, a party to the settlement. 

The defense says the settlement agreement was legitimate, but Randazzo skimmed and stole from his clients without Jones and Dowling’s knowledge.

Red flags and grumblings

Over two days of testimony, Brakey told jurors about varying levels of apparent deceit. He said he didn’t know about Randazzo’s shell companies or any consulting contracts with FirstEnergy. 

However, Brakey said Friday during questioning from defense attorneys there were some of what he first described as “red flags,” and later “grumblings,” about Randazzo. And he was known to be close to people like FirstEnergy’s former CEO, Tony Alexander. In any case, Brakey held him in high regard. 

“There were few individuals I more trusted in my life than Sam [Randazzo],” Brakey said. 

When Assistant Attorney General Matt Meyer tried to follow up on the ‘grumblings’ comment Monday, Judge Susan Baker Ross granted an objection from the defense to Meyer’s questions. After asking the jury to leave the room, Brakey expanded on the point. 

He said when he was “very green” and had just joined Brakey Consulting under his father around 2005 or 2006, Brakey said his father took a call from an IEU member on speakerphone in his presence. 

“I remember him fielding a call from a former member who had expressed the belief that Sam Randazzo had stolen from an old settlement,” he said, specifying he thinks the settlement was with Duke Energy, a Cincinnati-area utility company. 

Ross refused to allow the testimony, deeming it outside the scope of the alleged conspiracy.