"We have publicly confirmed the investigation of Mr. Noe in relation to some campaign contributions," Mr White told the Blade.  

Parallel to the Federal probe, the Blade noted, was the investigation of the Lucas County and Franklin County Offices of the Prosecutor into Noe's inability to account for $10-12 million of the BWC’s funds.  

Less than a month later, on May 26, 2005, state law enforcement officials, acting on behalf of prosecutors, raided Noe's company, Vintage Coins and Collectibles, trying to find out what happened to the $10-12 million missing from the $50 million belonging to BWC. 

The distinct possibility has been raised several times, that Noe may have funneled some of the mysteriously-missing money to politicians. 

According to the May 31, 2006 Toledo Blade, the Noes have given more than $200,000 to politicians over the last 16 years and their “giving increased substantially," the Blade noted, "after the Bureau of Workers’ Compensation in 1998 gave him the first of two $25 million payments to invest in his rare-coin funds." 

In April 2005, the Blade reported that two of the state's investments, gold coins valued at $300,000, had been lost in the mail. On May 31, 2005, the Ohio Attorney General's office reported that nearly $7 million worth of coins were unaccounted for. 

Noe apparently has a bad habit of losing rare coins. According to court documents filed in a previous case involving lost coins, on the evening of November 30, 1996, Noe claimed that $203,588 worth of coins and currency were stolen out of the backseat of his car and tried to collect on the loss with a claim to an insurance company. 

About a month and a half before the theft, Noe had purchased an insurance policy from the Homestead Insurance Company, which included coverage for the loss of inventory by way of theft, that had gone into effect on October 17, 1996.  

However, Homestead refused to pay the claim, citing two different exclusionary clauses. Noe sued the company and lost, and then he appealed that decision and lost.  

On April 27, 2005, the federal probe into Noe's funneling of money to the Bush campaign reached a turning point when FBI agents raided Noe’s home, and searched the joint for 3 hours looking for evidence of violations of federal campaign laws. 

In the summer of 2005, Tom Noe, was described by the Free Press, as a high-roller crony of Ohio Governor Taft, Ohio Senator George Voinovich and President Bush. But that that ain‘t all.  

It seems as though the Noes had a give-and-take arrangement with just about every Republican politician in the state. On June 5, 2005, Ohio’s Republican Attorney General, Jim Petro, acknowledged that Bernadette may have successfully lobbied his office to direct thousands of dollars in contracts to her law firm to collect debt on behalf of the state. 

According to the Free Press, Noe had even once donated money to Attorney General Petro‘‘s campaign. 

The news surrounding the disappearance of state funds intermingled with campaign finance violations involving state officials kept getting worse and worse over the summer. On June 8, 2005, media reports said that the BWC had concealed over $215 million in losses and that Governor Taft had been aware of the situation for months.  

A week later, on June 14, 2005, Governor Taft sent a letter to the Ohio Ethics Commission admitting that he failed to disclose perks and favors from Noe, stating that it has, "recently come to my attention that I failed to list a number of golf outings or events on my financial disclosure forms over the past several years." 

On July 22, 2005, Attorney General, Petro, said Noe stole millions of dollars by using a "Ponzi" scheme to fabricate profits. 

On August 27, 2005, Noe took  a swipe at Taft, when his attorney released a statement saying that on May 13, 2001, Noe told the Governor about the rare-coin fund he operated for the BWC at a Toledo area golf club, after Taft had claimed that he did not know anything about the coin investment with Noe until April 3, 2005, when the Toledo Blade first reported it. 

The first hammer dropped on October 27, 2005, when Noe was officially charged with illegally funneling $45,400 to the Bush-Cheney campaign that was raised at a $2,000-a-seat fund-raiser in Columbus, Ohio in October, 2003, by Noe making contributions in the names of others. 

The scheme allowed Noe to ignore the $2,000 limit on individual donations by passing the money through 24 friends and associates, described as "conduits" by investigators.  

Some of the known "conduits," are 4 current or former Ohio elected officials, including Toledo City Councilman Betty Shultz, Lucas County Commissioner Maggie Thurber, former state Representative Sally Perz, and former Toledo Mayor Donna Owens.  

Court records also show that Noe’s brother-in-law, Joe Restivoand, and 2 former aides to Governor Taft also served as funnels. 

All of the conduits signed donor cards that stated they were the source of their donations even though each knew that Noe made the contributions, prosecutors said. Each politician now faces state ethics charges for failing to disclose the money they received from Noe. 

On May 31, 2006, critics took it as a sign that the hammer may be ready to fall on a whole slew of crooked politicians when Noe entered a guilty plea in the Federal US District Court in Toledo to 3 felony charges related to violating campaign finance laws and told the judge that he agreed "to accept responsibility to spare my family and friends the further embarrassment of any additional court proceeding."  

On June 1, 2006, the Blade reported that Bush and the RNC returned a total of $6,000 in direct contributions from the Noes and said, “State and federal politicians from Mr. Taft to Secretary of State Ken Blackwell, the Republican nominee for governor, to California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger - have returned tens of thousands of dollars in contributions from Noe and his wife.” 

At the time of Noe's indictment, a senior Justice Department official said the case represented the largest campaign money-laundering scheme prosecuted by the DOJ since the new campaign finance laws were enacted in 2002. 

Ironically, its now known that Bush's reelection could have been derailed by a reporter at the Toledo Blade, the same newspaper that has been out front on the investigation into this whole matter from the beginning.   

According to Bill Frogameni in Salon.com on October 6, 2005, the Blade's chief political columnist, Fritz Wenzel, was told of Noe's campaign finance violations as early as January 2004, but never gave the information to the Blade.  

He learned of the violations from a Republican by the name of Joe Kidd, who was then the director of the Board of Elections, who was actually fueding with Bernadette Noe at the time, and retaliated against her by telling Wenzel that Noe was illegally funneling money to the Bush-Cheney campaign and running a questionable coin investment with the state.  

According to Salon, sources confirmed that Kidd told them he had this conversation with Wenzel at the time. 

However, as it turns out, both Wenzel and his son had personal relationships with the Noes, who even attended the son's wedding.