A federal court has officially dismissed a corruption indictment against former Cincinnati City Council member and mayoral contender P.G. Sittenfeld.
Sittenfeld was sentenced to 16 months in prison after a jury found him guilty in 2022 on one charge of bribery and one charge of extortion. He was found not guilty on other counts of honest services wire fraud, bribery and extortion.
Sittenfeld spent four-and-a-half months in prison before he was released pending an appeal. He received a pardon by President Donald Trump in May, 2025. A decision this April by the U.S. Supreme Court vacated his conviction and sent the case back to lower federal courts. The U.S. Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals subsequently remanded the case back to the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Ohio, where it originated.
"In what should prove to be the last chapter of this long-running saga, the government has moved ... to dismiss the indictment against Defendant Alexander 'P.G.' Sittenfeld in this matter with prejudice," U.S. District Court Judge Douglass R. Cole wrote in his decision.
Cole's decision also ordered the federal government to return $40,000 Sittenfeld paid as part of his sentence.
Background
After a lengthy two-year FBI investigation, a federal grand jury agreed to charge Sittenfeld with two counts each of honest services wire fraud, bribery concerning programs receiving federal funds, and attempted extortion by a government official in 2020. Federal agents arrested him at his home Nov. 19, 2020.
At the center of Sittenfeld's conviction: allegations he received $20,000 from undercover FBI agents.
Federal prosecutors alleged Sittenfeld took the bribes in 2018 in the form of four checks from LLCs to his political action committee. Those contributions came with an understanding, prosecutors alleged, that Sittenfeld would deliver a veto-proof majority on approvals for a development project at 435 Elm Street Downtown.
The FBI enlisted developer Chinedum Ndukwe to act as an informant in that case. Ndukwe had been under FBI investigation for allegations, including money laundering, prior to aiding the federal investigation into Sittenfeld.
The prosecution used taped conversations between the agents and Sittenfeld, including one in which he stated, "I can deliver the votes," to convince the jury.
Sittenfeld has denied he accepted the money in exchange for favorable votes on any development deal.
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