Dylo Scholarship available to Wyoming area student with Masonic affiliation

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Christmas play at St. Evangelical Lutheran Church

<p>He keeps rearing his ugly head &#8211; this conniving, slick former Hazleton attorney who helped mastermind one of the most scandalous corruption cases in Luzerne County history.</p><p>The bombastic Robert Powell had named one of his businesses Big Kahuna Realty and christened his luxury yacht Reel Justice. Considering his complicity in the &#8220;Kids for Cash&#8221; scandal, it was his good fortune that he escaped real justice when charged only with failing to report a crime. He&#8217;s out of prison now, but Mark Ciavarella and Michael Conahan, the two former county judges he conspired with to close the county juvenile detention center and build two new ones, are serving 28- and 17.5-year prison terms, respectively.</p><p>Sometimes, our justice system gets it right.</p><p>Powell and local developer Robert Mericle were the money men in the criminal scheme that rocked Luzerne County, landed us on &#8220;20/20&#8221; and became the subject of a documentary considered for an Academy Award.</p><p>Now, the big kahuna is in the news again, fighting with all his might to stave off the perceived sharks circling around his reported $120 million in legal fees from an Avoca environmental contamination lawsuit. Another beneficiary of this settlement is Powell&#8217;s former law partner Jill Moran. Remember her? Moran was Luzerne County&#8217;s prothonotary before she was forced to resign and cooperate with federal investigators to escape prosecution in the &#8220;Kids for Cash&#8221; case.</p><p>This real-life Bonnie and Clyde were co-owners of Big Kahuna Realty and were also involved in a failed 37-acre townhouse development project in Mountain Top called the Sanctuary in Mountain Top.</p><p>Times Leader staff writer Jennifer Learn-Andes examined hundreds of pages of court documents related to Powell&#8217;s latest legal wranglings. Her front-page article, published last Sunday and titled &#8220;Powell&#8217;s Big Payday?&#8221; reads like a John Grisham novel.</p><p>Lawyers are fighting each other while greedily eyeing their cut of Powell&#8217;s windfall. Money allegedly stashed in the Cayman Islands. Culprits living large in a Palm Beach Garden mansion. Plus, the protagonist allegedly made &#8220;frequent trips to Switzerland,&#8221; a court filing says. Add to that, some of the juveniles allegedly scarred for life after appearing before then Judge Ciavarella are also in line to tap into Powell&#8217;s net worth. Geez, give this guy a break.</p><p>Adding to the drama, Powell is suing his former partner-in-crime Michael Conahan and Conahan&#8217;s wife, Barbara. The Conahans, Powell and Powell&#8217;s wife, Debra, guaranteed a reported $4.62 million in loans from a local bank for the now botched Sanctuary development. Powell&#8217;s law firm repaid the loan in 2014, Learn-Andes reported, and now he wants the Conahans to reimburse him for their share. Barbara Conahan said she never signed any loan guarantees.</p><p>The plot thickens.</p><p>Now living in ritzy Palm Beach County, Barbara Conahan said someone from the Powell Law firm witnessed what was not her signature. My goodness! Now in counterclaims, she&#8217;s saying Powell and Moran treated the Sanctuary as their own private property. She wants them to give her hubby back the $1.2 million he loaned their law firm for the project.</p><p>You gotta love it, watching Powell and Conahan, who brought incalculable harm to Luzerne County, now turning on each other over exactly what bound them together &#8211; money.</p><p>Philadelphia attorney Richard Sprague is also going after Powell. He claims Robert and Debra Powell owe him $169,431.76 plus fees for past legal representation. Sprague&#8217;s worried Powell&#8217;s fees from the contamination suit &#8220;will no doubt be hidden and inaccessible to outstanding creditors.&#8221; Does that even sound like something Robert Powell would do?</p><p>Powell countered he was &#8220;displeased&#8221; with Sprague&#8217;s representation and is disputing his fees. Tough luck, Sprague.</p><p>One who must be amused by all of this is former Luzerne County judge Ann Lokuta. Sprague presided over the state Court of Judicial Discipline which heard Lokuta&#8217;s misconduct case. He refused to recuse himself after Lokuta argued he had a conflict of interest because of ties to her enemies, Powell and Conahan. Lokuta lost both her job and her pension.</p><p>The cast of characters in this legal civil war also included Gregory Zappala, who co-owned with Powell the two juvenile detention centers at the heart of &#8220;Kids for Cash.&#8221; In court filings, Zappala said Powell, using a fake name, formed a Cayman Island company and &#8220;was reported to have taken duffle bags of cash&#8221; to Costa Rica. This is a page turner, all right.</p><p>Powell and Zappala sued each other but privately settled their differences, the TL reported.</p><p>Poor Bobby Powell. He&#8217;s tried to do the right thing but apparently just got mixed up with the wrong crowd. Sure, he paid off two judges over $700,000, and later testified against them, claiming he was a victim of extortion. And then, he said, his own former business partner Zappala took advantage of his distress and sued him when he was down and out.</p><p>Now he can&#8217;t even live in peace in Palm Beach and drive around in a 2014 Maserati Quattroporte and 2015 Mercedes-Benz S500. The TL&#8217;s investigation uncovered those two luxury vehicles that cost a combined $200,000 are registered to the Powells.</p><p>Robert Powell paid his debt to society. Isn&#8217;t that enough?</p><p>You be the judge.</p><style>
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<div class="neCaption">Betty Roccograndi </div></div><div class="metaInfo"><photo0>https://www.timesleader.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/02/web1_Roccograndi-3.jpg</photo0><caption0>Betty Roccograndi </caption0><photoCredit0></photoCredit0></div></div>
<div class="metaInfo"><factboxMeta><p>Betty Roccograndi&#8217;s &#8220;Zeroing In&#8221; column will appear Saturdays on the Times Leader Opinion page beginning March 5.</p></factboxMeta></div><div class="metaInfo"><shirttailMeta><p>Betty Roccograndi, a Wyoming Valley resident and an award-winning journalist, is a freelance columnist. The views expressed here are not necessarily those of the Times Leader.</p></shirttailMeta></div>

Zeroing In: Hasn’t Robert Powell been through enough? You be the judge