It is, federal prosecutors say, maybe the most important public corruption scandal in Ohio’s historical past, a three-year conspiracy wherein one among Ohio’s greatest companies funneled some $60 million to one of many state’s strongest politicians in alternate for a $1.3 billion bailout.

And these investigators say they’re solely coming to the top of Act I.

On Thursday, the previous Republican speaker of the Ohio House of Representatives, Larry L. Householder, will likely be sentenced in federal courtroom in Cincinnati for violating racketeering and bribery legal guidelines.

The outlines of the costs have been recognized since his arrest, with 4 different males, three years in the past: FirstEnergy Corporation, a Fortune 500 electrical utility based mostly in Akron, funneled the $60 million although varied nonprofit entities. In return, Mr. Householder rammed a legislation by way of the state legislature that gave the corporate the bailout for 2 troubled nuclear energy vegetation. Prosecutors have really useful a sentence of as much as 20 years.

But, as described early this 12 months in a 26-day trial, the alliance between the utility and Mr. Householder, 64, was excess of a bribery scandal. Among different issues, prosecutors and specialists say, it was an nearly cinematic instance of how the darkish cash that pervades each state and federal politics slithers unseen from donor to beneficiary.

It can also be a cautionary story about how state legislatures — second-rung political our bodies which are typically run by part-time politicians, however more and more coping with problems with nationwide significance — are a minimum of as susceptible to manipulation by particular pursuits as their Washington counterparts.

David DeVillers, who oversaw the federal investigation because the U.S. legal professional in Cincinnati till early 2021, stated in an interview that the gusher of darkish cash was essential to the plot and a problem nicely past Ohio.

“Any time you have a supermajority, whether it’s Republicans or Democrats, and industries that are based on passing laws like marijuana or sports gambling or energy, it’s a formula for corruption,” he stated.

In a memorandum on sentencing final week, Mr. Householder’s lawyer, Steven L. Bradley, stated that his shopper had not admitted wrongdoing, and that Mr. Householder genuinely believed that the laws enacting the bailout “was an important piece of legislation, which is why he advocated and voted for it.” 

The blare of publicity and the ignominy of conviction, Mr. Bradley wrote, had left Mr. Householder “a broken man.” In an e mail, Mr. Bradley stated he plans to “vigorously pursue an appeal with the hope of winning a new trial.”

Mr. Householder, a onetime insurance coverage agent from an impoverished rural county in southeast Ohio, had been House speaker from 2001 to 2004. He left his legislative seat due to time period limits and confronted a federal corruption investigation after leaving the publish then, however was not charged.

After returning to the legislature in 2016, Mr. Householder secretly spent thousands and thousands in 2018 to assist Republican candidates for 21 seats within the State House — greater than a fifth of the 99 seats — who would again his rebel marketing campaign to once more develop into House speaker. He spent extra thousands and thousands on a media marketing campaign to push the nuclear bailout legislation to passage, after which tens of thousands and thousands on a scorched-earth campaign to undermine a poll initiative that threatened to undo it.

By the time he was arrested in July 2020, Mr. Householder was soliciting secret contributions from others searching for legislative favors — and plotting to vary the State Constitution’s time period limits clause to increase his tenure by 16 years.

At every step, an internet of political motion committees and dummy nonprofit organizations referred to as 501(c)(4)s, after their place in the federal tax code, ensured that cash fueling the schemes couldn’t be traced to Mr. Householder or FirstEnergy.

“The scope of the conspiracy was unprecedented,” prosecutors wrote in their sentencing memorandum. “So was the damage it left in its wake, both in terms of its potential financial harm to Ohioans and its erosion of public trust.”

In a wiretap disclosed throughout the trial, a lobbyist charged within the affair, Neil Clark, boasted to undercover F.B.I. brokers about his handiwork.

“I spent close to $20 million in the last eight weeks, $20 million,” he stated. “FirstEnergy got $1.3 billion in subsidies, free payments.”

He later added: “So what do they care about putting in $20 million a year for this thing?”

FirstEnergy had sought state subsidies for 2 nuclear energy vegetation on the shore of Lake Erie for years when Mr. Householder returned to the State House in 2016. The firm claimed that renewable power and cheaper fuels had made each vegetation unprofitable.

Mr. Householder left little doubt that he wished his previous job as speaker again. After his 2016 election, FirstEnergy’s chief government on the time, Chuck Jones, invited him to fly on the corporate’s personal jet to attend the inauguration of President Donald J. Trump.

Over a number of days of socializing at high-end eating places, prosecutors stated, they mentioned a deal: Mr. Householder wanted cash to regain the speaker’s publish when its occupant left workplace in 2018. The firm wanted a legislative resolution to its nuclear energy woes.

What started with a handshake turned a multimillion-dollar political operation, with the cash laundered by way of nonprofit teams allowed by the tax code to hide donors’ names.

“They can give as much or more to the (c)(4) and nobody would ever know,” the lobbyist, Mr. Clark, advised Mr. Householder in one other wiretapped dialog. “So you don’t have to be afraid.”

Weeks later, Mr. Householder established a 501(c)(4) referred to as Generation Now. Other nonprofits, each new and previous, had been rolled into the scheme: a PAC referred to as Hardworking Ohioans, two new nonprofits and plenty of extra.

Rivers of nameless cash — most, however not all, from FirstEnergy — started to move. In one typical transaction, Generation Now shunted $1 million of FirstEnergy donations to the newly shaped Coalition for Growth and Opportunity, whose solely reported officer was a Kentucky lawyer who oversaw different nonprofits. The Coalition for Growth and Opportunity donated $1 million to its separate PAC, which spent it on media campaigns supporting Republicans pleasant to Mr. Householder and opposing unfriendly ones.

And so it went: At least $3 million spent in 2018 to elect Republicans backing Mr. Householder’s speaker ambitions. Nearly $17 million extra in 2019 on a profitable media marketing campaign supporting House Bill 6, the laws bailing out FirstEnergy nuclear vegetation.

Clean power advocates and the pure fuel business opposed the $1.3 billion measure, which propped up two unrelated coal-fired vegetation and photo voltaic power initiatives moreover the $1 billion nuclear subsidy. And once they started accumulating signatures for a poll initiative to overturn the bailout, FirstEnergy devoted one other $38 million to quash that effort.

The cash paid for a non-public detective and bullies to disrupt signature gatherers, in addition to a saturation promoting marketing campaign claiming that China was “quietly invading our energy grid” with the assistance of opponents of the bailout.

Backers thought-about it cash nicely spent. When House Bill 6 turned legislation in July 2019, Mr. Jones, the FirstEnergy chairman, despatched an image of Mount Rushmore to Samuel C. Randazzo, then the chairman of the state Public Utilities Commission. Supplanting the mountain’s 4 presidents had been faces of the 2 males and executives at FirstEnergy and one other utility.

Below that, prosecutors said, was an all-capital-letters caption that extolled their political clout with a typical sexual vulgarity.

Meanwhile, Mr. Householder’s Generation Now nonprofit was already plowing new floor. In a wiretapped dialog in 2018, Mr. Householder stated he was “expecting big things in (c)(4) money from payday lenders,” an business that has lobbied federal and state officers in opposition to regulating high-interest loans to the poor.

For some, the price of publicity has been heavy.

FirstEnergy fired its prime executives. Later, it paid $234 million in fines to federal companies and surrendered one other $115 million in ill-gotten features after admitting to large-scale fraud.

Mr. Clark, the lobbyist, died by suicide in 2021 after publishing a book that alleged a lifetime of soiled offers in state politics.

Federal prosecutors say their inquiry is continuous, though they haven’t stated the place it would lead.

In what was, in impact, a plea discount with federal prosecutors, FirstEnergy confessed that it had given Mr. Randazzo $4.3 million “to further FirstEnergy Corp.’s interests” on nuclear and different points in 2019, weeks earlier than Gov. Mike DeWine named him to go the state Public Utilities Commission.

Mr. Randazzo, who denies wrongdoing, has not been charged.

Court filings and associated lawsuits have referred to Governor DeWine and Lt. Gov. Jon Husted, who’ve stated they had been unaware of the unlawful funds. Both supported House Bill 6, and Mr. DeWine benefited from a whole lot of thousand of {dollars} in get-out-the-vote assist from FirstEnergy throughout his 2018 election marketing campaign. The firm additionally donated $75,000 to his daughter’s failed bid for an area elective workplace.

FirstEnergy, in the meantime, faces investigation by the federal Securities and Exchange Commission and shareholder lawsuits.

And within the 5 states the place it owns electrical utilities, utility commissions are prone to require tens of thousands and thousands of {dollars} in refunds to prospects, partially involving scandal-related spending.

On Wednesday, the corporate stated in an announcement that it “has accepted responsibility for its actions related to House Bill 6 and has taken significant steps to put past issues behind us.”

“Today we are a different, stronger company with a sound strategy and focused on a bright future,” it added.

Mr. DeVillers, the previous U.S. legal professional, stated that nonprofits like these central to the FirstEnergy scandal have been largely ignored by legislation enforcement. Enforcement of restrictions within the federal tax code on 501(c)(4) teams has been lax.

Dave Anderson, the communications director of the Energy and Policy Institute, a watchdog group that follows the power business, stated which may now change.

“This is a case that really illustrates how they can be used for criminal malfeasance,” he stated, referring to nonprofits. Now, he stated, attorneys who advised shoppers that 501(c)(4) teams are secure conduits for secret money could also be “holding their breath and thinking, ‘Maybe the convictions will be thrown out.’”