A Lima man has been indicted by an Allen County grand jury on one count of bribery, Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost announced. Brady Schroeder faces the third-degree felony charge in Allen County. The charge stems from Schroeder’s recent illegal-dumping case, which was handled in Lima Municipal Court. The announcement identified Schroeder as a Lima, Ohio man and tied the new felony case directly to the earlier municipal court prosecution.
The indictment alleges that after his conviction but before sentencing, Schroeder was seen on a Ring doorbell camera offering a job to a witness for the state. The indictment also alleges that he offered to pay the witness’s outstanding driver’s license fees in exchange for favorable testimony in the case.
According to the indictment, the offer did not end with that conversation. The indictment says the offer was reiterated later by text message. Prosecutors are treating the alleged job offer and the alleged offer to pay the license fees as the basis for the single bribery count returned by the grand jury.
The bribery charge grew out of an earlier case involving illegal dumping. Schroeder was convicted in December of a misdemeanor count of illegal disposal of construction and demolition debris. His case was prosecuted by the Ohio Attorney General’s Office in Lima Municipal Court, the same office that announced the new indictment.
In that dumping case, Schroeder was sentenced to 90 days in jail and 100 hours of community service. He was also fined $750 and ordered to complete full remediation of the dump site, subject to approval by the Ohio EPA. The court suspended 60 days of the jail sentence pending the site remediation.
After the incident described in the indictment, the witness contacted state investigators. The witness reached out to the Ohio Bureau of Criminal Investigation and to the Ohio EPA. That contact followed the alleged offer made on camera and the later text message described in the indictment, according to the announcement from the Attorney General’s Office.
Bribery as a third-degree felony typically carries a prison sentence of nine to 36 months. An indictment is a criminal allegation, not a finding of guilt. Schroeder is presumed innocent unless he is proved guilty in court, and the bribery count will now be decided through the court process in Allen County.