Ex-Councilman Pastor's brazen scheming far exceeded charges against Sittenfeld | Letters

Jailed former Cincinnati City Councilman P.G. Sittenfeld surely smiled ruefully if he read Kevin Grasha's May 2 story detailing the reasons why former Councilman Jeff Pastor is also behind bars ("Friend of ex-City Councilman Pastor gets 12 months in bribery scheme").

Though some citizens may see equivalency in Sittenfeld and Pastor's fraud convictions, the details Grasha provided make it abundantly clear that Pastor's brazen scheming was a skyscraper above the level of the highly debatable charges on which Sittenfeld was convicted. It's outrageous that Pastor's sentence is only slightly longer than Sittenfeld's.

Questions regarding Pastor's character were highlighted in the Enquirer years before his conviction, in a story in which his next-door neighbors in North Avondale credibly alleged behavior by Pastor and his wife that went beyond just rude to aggressively toxic. If even half of the allegations were true, they marked the Pastors as nightmare neighbors of the first degree. In the story, Pastor came off looking like precisely the type of individual who could commit the egregious fraud that now has him locked up.

Jack Brennan, Clifton

This article originally appeared on Cincinnati Enquirer: Charges against PG Sittenfeld paled in comparison to Pastor's scheme