From the archives: Ron Cobb five years after Lost Trust
The following is an excerpt from an article published on July 18, 1995. The complete article appears below that.
Lobbying wasn’t real’
Lobbyist-turned-informer Ron Cobb has traded in his flashy Jaguar for a dark blue Lincoln Continental. He exchanged his cramped suite at The Town House Hotel for a spacious townhouse overlooking the 10th hole of one of Greenville’s premier golf courses, and prefers gardening and grilling out to all-night poker games.
He has even joined Greenville’s First Baptist Church and the local Chamber of Commerce.
__________
How Ron Cobb changed South Carolina
__________
He still has his much younger female companion, Shelley Adams. But she, too, has changed roles: from live-in girlfriend of a married man to wife and business partner. She’s vice president and he’s president of E.C. Industries, the textile company Cobb’s mother founded.
The company’s 65 employees manufacture uniforms for the health-care industry -- ``We’re working hard to maintain our lifestyle’’ -- and the Cobbs spend a third of their time traveling around the country meeting with clients.
``Lobbying wasn’t real,’’ Cobb says as he chomps on an unlit cigar and watches Bella the cat chase FBI video star Muffin the dog around the living room.
``We’ve kind of come back to my roots. My values and my morals are right now.’’
The new Mrs. Cobb notes that while it’s not so flashy, the quality of their life is much improved. ``We think we’re better people because we’ve been through this and come out the other side,’’ she says.
Cobb, a grandfather of two, is still working on his book. But it’s changed from a quick and dirty expose to what he calls a more meaningful story of ``my personal journey as it fits into South Carolina’s governmental journey.’’
He believes an uplifting tale will find a wide audience. After all, he says, the people he meets like happy endings. ``People I don’t know will come up and say, `You’re Ron Cobb, aren’t you?’
``And they have nice things to say. They appreciate what I did. They felt like things had gotten out of hand. That makes me feel good.’’
The complete article on the fifth anniversary of Operation Lost Trust: After the sting, private lives and public scandals
They were public figures in a sordid political drama, but even now, as they try to rebuild private lives, they bear the taint of Lost Trust.
Many of the lawmakers ensnared in the scandal remain resolute in the belief they did not sell their votes. Some in the group, who with one exception pleaded guilty or were convicted, acknowledge they did wrong.
Many went to jail. Others went home to revive ailing businesses and restore their reputations. Most remain alienated from politics.
They are skeptical the investigation that captured them found everyone who did wrong. Nor do they believe it cleaned up everything that’s bad about politics.
``Do I think politics in general has improved?’’ asks former Cherokee Rep. Donna Moss, who pleaded guilty to drug charges. ``No. From what I see, I don’t think things have changed at all. There still are people who are taking advantage of the system. Maybe they’re just being a little more careful about how they’re taking advantage of it.’’
Moss is the only convicted lawmaker who has run for office again. She lost a 1994 Democratic primary, capturing 43 percent of the vote against Rep. Olin Phillips.
Now chairwoman of the S.C. Peach Festival, Moss continues to do volunteer work and spend time with her husband of 22 years and their two children, ages 15 and 20.
``I’m just doing the things I want to do, which is nice for a change,’’ Moss says. ``I went for 12 years and did everything that was expected of me. It is time to do something else.’’
The first of the stung legislators to admit he broke the law, former Sen. Rick Lee of Spartanburg, pauses and answers ``yes and no’’ when asked if he did wrong.
``The only way I would have borrowed the money from the bank to run for office in the first place was in the knowledge up front that I could raise the money back from lobbyists,’’ he says. But Lee isn’t sure it was wrong when he agreed to help advance a pari-mutuel betting bill he co-sponsored.
``I still don’t feel at this time that I sold my vote,’’ says Lee, who took over the family furniture store to pay the debts from 12 years of making laws instead of money.
`ONE QUOTE’
Many of the former public figures want nothing to do with the spotlight they once sought.
``I’ll give you one quote,’’ former Dorchester Rep. Tom Limehouse says. ``I no longer want to be a public figure. I no longer want to see my name in print. I want to be a private citizen.’’
The man who told FBI undercover lobbyist Ron Cobb on videotape that he would push a pari-mutuel betting bill for ``a couple of suits and five or six shirts’’ seems more reflective than bitter.
``I did my federal time I was sentenced to, and prior to that, I did my state time for six years in the House,’’ Limehouse says. ``The public does not realize the sacrifices those who run make.’’
Tee Ferguson, who was a circuit judge by the time he was convicted, is back home in Spartanburg. He won’t say if he wants to practice law again, or what kind of work he is doing.
``I’ve just got to get out and put my shoulders to the wheel and accomplish some things,’’ Ferguson says. ``I’m in the process of making a number of decisions about how I’m going to approach things.’’
Those tainted by Lost Trust sometimes express frustration at being forever linked to its stigma. It becomes an issue whenever they appear in the public eye.
In 1993, former House Labor, Commerce and Industry Chairman Robert Brown found himself Page One news again when state officials gave him a guaranteed job for life. Brown was named a designated agent, which lets him sell auto insurance to bad drivers, secure in the knowledge that their losses will be covered by the fees all drivers pay.
Critics questioned whether someone connected with the sting should get the state designation. Others said the status was due Brown as heir to his family business.
Brown, who still runs the family insurance and real estate business, says folks around Marion County treat him well.
He sometimes wishes he had fought the charges, but says the public mood was against him. Brown didn’t want to gamble with the possibility of a guilty verdict and the much longer sentence that would have resulted.
``I’m not without blame, and I’ve accepted responsibility for what I did wrong,’’ Brown says. ``I accepted some money under some questionable circumstances, but never with the intent of selling out any kind of vote or influence or anything like that.’’
Although his name still is occasionally linked to the sting, Dick Greer has managed to move rather quickly back into his old life.
The former state industry recruiter was in the House balcony this December, watching Rep. David Wilkins elected as the first Republican House speaker this century. Greer was on the dance floor at Gov. David Beasley’s inaugural ball in January.
``I’m very much interested in government, and they’re both friends of mine,’’ Greer says on his car phone while driving to Greenville from Columbia, where he’s back in the economic development business.
He won’t say exactly what he’s doing. But he says his work is the same it’s always been: creating and nurturing new businesses.
``I’m pretty much at peace with myself and the world,’’ Greer says. ``I would say I’m just as optimistic and enthusiastic about South Carolina as I ever was. I’m still proud of the job we did at the State Development Board when we were there.’’
`Lobbying wasn’t real’
Lobbyist-turned-informer Ron Cobb has traded in his flashy Jaguar for a dark blue Lincoln Continental. He exchanged his cramped suite at The Town House Hotel for a spacious townhouse overlooking the 10th hole of one of Greenville’s premier golf courses, and prefers gardening and grilling out to all-night poker games.
He has even joined Greenville’s First Baptist Church and the local Chamber of Commerce.
He still has his much younger female companion, Shelley Adams. But she, too, has changed roles: from live-in girlfriend of a married man to wife and business partner. She’s vice president and he’s president of E.C. Industries, the textile company Cobb’s mother founded.
The company’s 65 employees manufacture uniforms for the health-care industry -- ``We’re working hard to maintain our lifestyle’’ -- and the Cobbs spend a third of their time traveling around the country meeting with clients.
``Lobbying wasn’t real,’’ Cobb says as he chomps on an unlit cigar and watches Bella the cat chase FBI video star Muffin the dog around the living room.
``We’ve kind of come back to my roots. My values and my morals are right now.’’
The new Mrs. Cobb notes that while it’s not so flashy, the quality of their life is much improved. ``We think we’re better people because we’ve been through this and come out the other side,’’ she says.
Cobb, a grandfather of two, is still working on his book. But it’s changed from a quick and dirty expose to what he calls a more meaningful story of ``my personal journey as it fits into South Carolina’s governmental journey.’’
He believes an uplifting tale will find a wide audience. After all, he says, the people he meets like happy endings. ``People I don’t know will come up and say, `You’re Ron Cobb, aren’t you?’
``And they have nice things to say. They appreciate what I did. They felt like things had gotten out of hand. That makes me feel good.’’
A SLOW RECOVERY
The person who professes to have experienced the greatest personal change because of Operation Lost Trust is the one person acquitted of all changes.
Rep. Tim Wilkes, D-Fairfield, continues to serve in the Legislature after being the only one of 28 targets to escape conviction.
Wilkes was one of the sting’s many flamboyant characters, caught on secret FBI tapes during what he admits was an extended midlife crisis.
Wilkes bragged to reporters in 1989, when he braved Hurricane Hugo’s waves on his surfboard and was caught for driving under the influence in 1990 even after he knew he was being investigated.
``I guess it made me an easy target, or appear to be an easy target,’’ Wilkes says of his behavior. ``But that doesn’t make me a crook.’’
Wilkes’ defense centered on his taped statements that he planned to use Cobb’s $1,500 cash donation to defeat his election opponent. For the trial, Charleston defense attorney Gedney Howe remade Wilkes into the ``Little Timmy’’ of his childhood days in Winnsboro, complete with thick glasses and a toned-down wardrobe.
But he says the acquittal extended his reckless phase.
``I had this euphoria about `I was right,’ ‘’ Wilkes says. ``I was savoring it and that probably delayed the process of healing.’’
Wilkes says writing a book about the sting finally gave him perspective. Now 47, Wilkes is dating a woman just eight years younger than him and talks about starting a family. He has hired a lawyer to make the FBI purge information about him from its files, as ordered by the judge in his case.
``Five years after, I still have some unresolved and very complex things that I will have to deal with,’’ Wilkes says. ``But I am a heck of a lot closer than I was in 1991.’’
`EVIL AND ROTTEN’
The person who seems least changed by time is former Charleston Rep. Bob Kohn, who helped the FBI catch his friends after he was caught with drugs.
Kohn still views life as a game and harbors enough cynicism to boast that he and Cobb could have taken down half the Legislature with enough time.
``We were just an absolutely depraved group of people,’’ he says, sipping a Diet Coke in a hotel bar. ``You look back now, you say, `How did we get so stupid?’ ‘’
The low point in Kohn’s life had nothing to do with the sting. It came in 1993 when his son committed suicide. News reports said the death was related to Lost Trust. Kohn insists it wasn’t.
But the loss shook Kohn’s interest in almost everything. He stopped work on a screenplay he calls ``an X-rated version of life in the General Assembly.’’
He avoids nearly all contact with the government, with the exception of the FBI. He has given lectures on how to make stings more effective. He says he still gets calls seeking advice or explanations.
Kohn is reviled by many of the legislators he stung. Convicted former Rep. Jim Faber of Richland County calls Kohn and Cobb ``the degenerates of society.’’ Many who knew Kohn think he relished his role in the drama a little too much.
True, he says, but that also masks true remorse.
``I’m upset with myself that I was as evil and rotten as I was,’’ he says. ``And I’m really sorry for what I did -- to the citizens, to my friends, my family. But I don’t have one bit of remorse for what I did to the Legislature. They deserved everything I did to them.’’
Kohn rushed to turn informant as soon as prosecutors explained how much time he could cut off a sentence that would have been ``in the hundreds-of-years category.’’
Kohn’s undercover work cut his time to seven months in a federal prison camp in North Carolina. Within days of returning home, Kohn was back in the insurance- consulting business.
``The question is, do you want justice or mercy,’’ he says. ``If you get justice, you get what you deserve. And I didn’t want that.’’
This story was originally published September 15, 2016 at 3:08 PM with the headline "From the archives: Ron Cobb five years after Lost Trust."