Behind the Celebrezze indictment

This article was published in partnership with The Marshall Project – Cleveland, a nonprofit news team covering Ohio’s criminal justice systems. Sign up for their Cleveland newsletter and Facebook Group, and follow The Marshall Project on Instagram, Reddit and YouTube.

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.

To get information, I walked the courthouse halls and knocked on doors. It did not help much — Celebrezze was the administrative judge who controlled the staff.

After our stories started publishing in June 2023, the staff took even longer to respond to my records requests. A sheriff’s deputy followed me when I roamed the halls. It was no coincidence. He was once the driver for the former sheriff who pleaded guilty to theft-in-office charges after my reporting in 2009.

Undeterred, I often waited on a bench by Celebrezze’s chambers to get comments from her. She never spoke, but her staff took plenty of photos and videos of me.

A seismic shift occurred in February 2025. That is when I learned that an FBI subpoena was delivered to the court. I knew for months that the federal agents were interviewing people in the building.

But my source was clear: Don’t ask for the subpoena until the next day. So, I arrived in the parking lot early the next morning to wait for the courthouse to open.

About 45 minutes later, a copy of the subpoena was in my hand. I felt immense professional satisfaction when I read that the FBI wanted the documents I already obtained, and others dating back to 2009.

Those court aides who had stonewalled me for months were now going out of their way to respond. Emails now ended with cheerful best wishes for a good weekend.

My phone rang off the hook on Dec. 22, 2025, with calls from public officials after The Marshall Project – Cleveland reported that Celebrezze would face a tampering with records charge for creating a false court entry to assign a divorce case to herself, and eventually Dottore as receiver. She resigned that same day.

These kinds of days don’t happen often, but I was extremely proud of the work my editors allowed me to pursue for more than two years.

We will now wait a little longer to learn Celebrezze’s punishment. She was slated to face a judge on Jan. 7, but Common Pleas Judge Lauren Moore recused herself from the case that morning as prosecutors, FBI agents and Celebrezze’s attorney waited in court. Celebrezze sat in another room with her supporters. Moore would not say why she waited weeks to recuse herself.

Ohio’s Supreme Court Chief Justice Sharon L. Kennedy has appointed Mark Wiest, a retired judge from Wayne County, to oversee Celebrezze’s case. No new hearing date has been set.

On Jan. 13, Kennedy suspended Celebrezze’s law license for two years. But if she commits no further misconduct, one year of the suspension will be stayed, according to the ruling.

Kennedy further wrote in the high court’s opinion that “judges are held to the highest possible standard of ethical conduct, and Celebrezze failed to live up to that high standard.” Kennedy also noted that an indefinite license suspension is warranted following a felony conviction, but Celebrezze has yet to be convicted.