LIMA — Former Lima City Councilman Ray Magnus said Thursday he has hired an attorney and plans to go forward with the lawsuit he filed against Allen County Sheriff Sam Crish, after Crish’s attorney told him they were going to fight it.
“He absolutely refused to make any payment whatsoever,” Magnus said. “(Mike) Rumer called me Tuesday and said Sam has no interest in making payments on this loan.”
Magnus said he wanted Crish to catch up on several months of missing payments. Had Crish done that, Magnus said he was willing to drop the lawsuit.
“Rumer said I will answer your complaint and we will take it from there,” Magnus said. “I haven’t talked to Sam, personally. I’ve talked to him through his attorney but he knows my number. He had no trouble getting a hold of me to borrow the money.”
Rumer said he will be answering the lawsuit.
“He made an offer to settle. It was rejected,” Rumer said. Rumer declined to say what the proposed settlement was.
Magnus said he has now retained an attorney to take over the lawsuit which he filed on his own. He said the dollar amount is too great. Magnus also said he plans to add additional defendants to the lawsuit who are connected to Crish’s finances but he refused to name those people before he files in court.
“We will wait for Mike Rumer’s answer to see what fantasy he comes up with,” Magnus said.
Magnus also said he is hurt since he thought he and Crish were good friends. He said he helped Crish with his first campaign for sheriff in 2008.
“Now I’m convinced I was more dollar signs for Sam,” Magnus said.
Magnus said he wished he never loaned Crish the money. He said he was not going to at first but Crish was persistent.
“I just don’t like loaning that kind of money to anybody. I loaned it because he kept asking and he kept saying he would be golden and we got to be friends. We were pretty close for a while there. I actually thought Sam and I were friends,” Magnus said.
Magnus said Crish wanted to borrow the money to pay off business debts, supposedly for a business he started after he had to resign from the sheriff’ office to run for sheriff in 2008.
Magnus said he gave Crish a loan of $100,000 on Jan. 2, 2013, and filed a promissory note Crish signed agreeing to pay back the money. He said Crish made regular monthly payments for more than three years until July 2016 leaving an outstanding balance of $60,809.
In July, Magnus said Crish asked him to borrow $102,000, in part to be used to pay off the $60,809 plus an additional amount just over $40,000.
Magnus took out a loan for $102,000 from Citizens National Bank of Bluffton and had Crish sign another promissory note agreeing to pay back the loan but soon stopped making payments.
Crish is on the ballot next week unopposed.
Crish also is the subject of an FBI investigation. The FBI served a search warrant on his office inside the sheriff’s office on Sept. 7. The FBI confirmed agents were at the sheriff’s office but would not comment further.
Additionally, convicted drug dealer Demond Liles is appealing his conviction, saying he let Crish borrow $20,000 then Crish used the drug task force to entrap Liles into committing felony drug crimes to get out of paying his debt. Liles initially made the statement earlier this year and Crish denied it.
Crish has said he is a compulsive gambler and is receiving treatment for it.
.neFileBlock {
margin-bottom: 20px;
}
.neFileBlock p {
margin: 0px 0px 0px 0px;
}
.neFileBlock .neFile {
border-bottom: 1px dotted #aaa;
padding-bottom: 5px;
padding-top: 10px;
}
.neFileBlock .neCaption {
font-size: 85%;
}
