A new culprit in the Ohio vote-rigging scandal?

Raw Story points the finger at Bernadette Noe, wife of Tom Noe, embroiled in money laundering probes related to "Coin-gate." The scandals come together! To paraphrase Flannery O'Connor, everything that sinks into the morass must converge. Also check out what Brad Friedman has to say...

You'll also want to read John Conyers' blog for other recent devlopments on the coin-gate scandal -- which, I confess, I should have covered earlier.

Bob Fitrakis is, as always, on top of the story...

But Noe was more than a mere fundraiser. The New York Times dubbed him Toledo's "Mr. Republican," the GOP "man to see" in northwest Ohio. While Tom chaired the regional Bush-Cheney campaign, his wife Bernadette chaired the scandal-torn Lucas County Board of Elections that played a key role in caging votes to put Bush back in the White House.

Noe's fortune came in part from charging the Bureau of Worker's Compensation (BWC) $12.6 million in coin-fund related expenses for managing the $50 million investment between 1998 and 2004. Federal and state officials are now investigating these expenses.

A "Ponzi scheme" is what Ohio's Republican Attorney General Jim Petro calls the method by which Noe may have stolen millions of dollars from the state of Ohio's Bureau of Worker's Compensation (BWC).