EDITOR’S NOTE: The Times Leader presents a look back at the past year this week with Eastern Ohio’s Top 10 stories of 2023, as selected by the newspaper’s editorial staff.

ST. CLAIRSVILLE — Mark Thomas’ untarnished career as an elected official brought him into the public eye, but he is now serving a prison term related to his former legal practice.

In June, Thomas began serving five years behind bars for federal mail fraud. According to the inmate locator service at bop.gov, Thomas, 63, is currently housed at Federal Correctional Institution Morgantown, West Virginia, with a release date of Aug. 1, 2027. The site is a minimum security facility for men that houses 446 inmates.

Thomas pleaded guilty in August 2022 before Judge Algenon Marbley of the U.S. Southern District of Ohio. His sentencing was delayed several times due to health reasons.

Thomas had run unopposed and been elected St. Clairsville 3rd Ward councilman in 2021 but resigned his seat shortly before entering his plea. While on council, Thomas was active in several projects, including an initiative to update the city charter and suggestions to pursue available federal funding.

Thomas had also served as a Belmont County commissioner until he lost his bid for reelection in 2018.

Thomas pleaded guilty to mail fraud in a case where he was accused of defrauding an elderly client of his former law firm while serving as her power of attorney, taking her money without her knowledge or permission and using it for his own benefit.

The fraud occurred from 2012-19. The indictment against Thomas states that he improperly used his power of attorney and status as a lawyer, even after his law license was revoked in 2015, to convince banks, life insurance companies and other organizations to transfer the client’s money for his use.

In addition to his prison term, Thomas was also ordered to pay $882,502 in restitution.

In 2019 after concluding his term as a commissioner at the end of 2018, Thomas served 30 days in jail for contempt of court for failing to comply with a court order to turn over documents from his private law practice related to the federal fraud case. He later complied with the records request. A lawsuit related to that case was dismissed.

The Ohio Board of Professional Conduct in Columbus suspended Thomas’s law license in Ohio in 2015 after he reportedly failed to file an answer to a formal complaint pending before the board.

In a memorandum, Thomas’s attorney Andrew P. Avellano had asked Judge Algenon Marbley of the U.S. Southern District of Ohio to consider a sentence of 51 months. He cited Thomas’s age and health issues and added that Thomas could begin to make meaningful restitution to the victim’s heirs if released sooner. Avellano also asked the judge to consider that Thomas had known the victim, said he cared about her well-being and intended to repay the money but got “in over his head.”