As former Cuyahoga County Domestic Relations Judge Leslie Ann Celebrezze walked into criminal court last month to face arraignment for tampering with records, my mind raced back to early 2023, when I first started investigating her.
My goal was to explore whether Celebrezze was acting within the law when appointing her longtime friend, Mark Dottore, as a receiver in cases that paid him hundreds of thousands of dollars in fees billed to divorcing couples.
Once I started asking for records, court administrators and Celebrezze’s staff took weeks to respond. That stood out to me…