Ohio’s largest electric utility secretly paid $60 million (enough to cover rent for 1,600 families for an entire year) in bribes to the Speaker of the Ohio House of Representatives, a state utility regulator, and a network of shell companies — and then told its own shareholders, in writing, that it operated with “integrity and honesty at the heart of our business.”

The Setup: A Company With a Failing Nuclear Problem and No Moral Limit

FirstEnergy Corporation ran two nuclear power plants that were bleeding money. For years, the company’s nuclear costs and liabilities climbed into the hundreds of millions of dollars. By 2018, the situation had reached a breaking point: FirstEnergy announced plans to decommission both plants, a move that would trigger billions of dollars in direct expenses and decades of environmental cleanup liability.

The company tried the legal route first. Two FirstEnergy subsidiaries filed for bankruptcy in an attempt to shed the decommissioning costs. That attempt collapsed when the Department of Justice and Ohio’s own Consumers’ Counsel objected to FirstEnergy’s demand for an explicit release of liability for cleanup expenses.

So the company pivoted to a backup plan. And that backup plan was a bribe.

How You Buy a $2 Billion Bailout With $60 Million in Bribes

The operation started early and ran like a machine. In early 2017, FirstEnergy began courting then-State Representative Larry Householder — a man who wanted to become Speaker of the Ohio House of Representatives. The company flew Householder and his sons to President Trump’s inauguration on the corporate jet. That is where the relationship was cemented.

Shortly after that trip, FirstEnergy created two shell organizations: Partners for Progress and Generation Now. These were ostensibly nonprofit entities. In reality, they were pipelines for moving bribe money out of FirstEnergy’s accounts and into the pockets of politicians. Through these vehicles, FirstEnergy concealed $2.9 million (enough to fully pay off the student loans of roughly 100 borrowers) in contributions to Householder during 2017 and 2018 alone.

Householder, now fully funded, won the speakership in January 2019. FirstEnergy then expanded the operation. The company paid incoming Public Utilities Commission of Ohio Chairman Sam Randazzo $4.3 million (enough to send 86 kids to a public university for four full years, tuition paid). Randazzo then helped write and politically support Ohio House Bill 6 — the legislation that would hand FirstEnergy its $2 billion payday.

The Money Timeline: Bribes Paid to Pass One Bill

HB6 moved fast once the money was flowing. Householder introduced the bill in April 2019. The Ohio House passed it in May. During those two months alone, FirstEnergy funneled at least $9.5 million (enough to build and fully equip a brand new public library) through its shadow network in concealed payments. The Ohio Senate added a “decoupling” provision — a mechanism allowing FirstEnergy to charge customers artificially high electricity rates — and passed the bill after FirstEnergy contributed another $7 million (enough to hire 140 teachers for a full school year).

Ohio Governor Mike DeWine signed HB6 into law on July 23, 2019. The moment the governor’s pen hit that paper, FirstEnergy had purchased a $2 billion ($2 billion — more than the average American earns in 40,000 lifetimes) reward using public corruption as the currency.

When Ohioans Tried to Fight Back, FirstEnergy Paid to Crush Them

Ohioans who learned about HB6 organized a referendum effort to repeal the law through direct democracy. FirstEnergy responded by funneling over $38 million (enough to provide free school meals to 19,000 children for an entire year) into a campaign specifically designed to make that referendum fail.

The campaign falsely linked the referendum movement to the Chinese government in its advertising. FirstEnergy also funded efforts to bribe, disrupt, and disqualify the signature collectors who were trying to get the referendum on the ballot. This was a company spending tens of millions of dollars to prevent Ohio citizens from exercising their democratic right to vote on a law that was literally forcing them to subsidize corporate profits through their electricity bills.

The referendum failed. FirstEnergy won. Ordinary Ohioans lost — and kept paying inflated electric bills because of it.

The Non-Financial Ledger: What Can’t Be Measured in Dollars

The headline numbers in this case are staggering. But the damage that FirstEnergy caused extends far beyond what any settlement or stock chart can capture. This was a company that systematically dismantled the public’s ability to trust the institutions that are supposed to protect them: elected government, regulatory agencies, and the energy grid itself.

Ohio ratepayers — regular people paying monthly electricity bills — were turned into an involuntary funding mechanism for a criminal enterprise. HB6 embedded a $1.3 billion (enough to pay the monthly utility bills of over 700,000 households for a full year) ratepayer-funded subsidy directly into the law. That means Ohioans who flipped on a light switch, ran a dishwasher, or kept their heat on during winter were unknowingly paying into a scheme built on bribery. They had no say, no disclosure, and no way to opt out.

The “decoupling” provision added another layer of harm. This mechanism allowed FirstEnergy to charge customers artificially high electricity rates worth $700 million (enough to buy every household in Columbus, Ohio a brand new refrigerator). This was money extracted directly from working families, seniors on fixed incomes, and small businesses operating on thin margins — transferred to a corporation that was simultaneously committing federal crimes.

The betrayal of democratic process here is total. The Speaker of the Ohio House was on FirstEnergy’s payroll — secretly — while he was introducing, shepherding, and passing legislation. The Chairman of the state’s Public Utilities Commission, the regulatory body whose entire job is to protect consumers from exactly this kind of corporate predation, helped write the very bill that benefited the company that had just wired him $4.3 million (the equivalent of buying a luxury home in cash as a thank-you gift). The institutions meant to serve the public were hollowed out and filled with corporate money.

Then, when the public tried to undo the damage through a legitimate democratic process, FirstEnergy deployed $38 million to stop them — using propaganda, disruption, and what federal prosecutors would eventually call a racketeering conspiracy. The message sent to Ohio citizens was clear and deliberate: your vote, your voice, and your legal rights exist only as long as a corporation cannot afford to buy them away from you.

Investors were betrayed with equal cynicism. While FirstEnergy’s own Code of Business Conduct told every employee that “company assets and funds may never be used for illegal purposes” and that workers “must conduct business honestly and fairly and not take unfair advantage of anyone through any misrepresentations of material facts, bribes, kickbacks, illegal payments,” the senior executives of that same company were running a years-long federal racketeering conspiracy. The people who bought FirstEnergy stock and bonds based on those assurances — pension funds, retirement accounts, working people’s savings — were handed a lie wrapped in a compliance manual.

Legal Receipts: The Words That Condemn Them

These are direct quotes from the federal court record. Every single one of them is verified in the source document.

“FirstEnergy and its most senior executives bankrolled one of the largest corruption and bribery schemes in U.S. history.”

— Plaintiffs’ Consolidated Complaint, Paragraph 3, as cited in the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals ruling

“FirstEnergy paid approximately $60 million to Ohio’s former Speaker of the House Larry Householder, the former Chairman of the Public Utilities Commission of Ohio Sam Randazzo, and others . . . via a web of lobbyists, shell companies, and political action committees.”

— Federal appellate court opinion, summarizing the district court’s findings

“[FirstEnergy] funneled over $38 million [to its payment network] . . . [and] the funds were spent on an advertising campaign urging Ohioans not to sign the referendum petition — which the groups baselessly linked to the Chinese government — and also to bribe, disrupt, or disqualify signature collectors.”

— Federal appellate court opinion, summarizing the district court’s findings

“Buoyed by the concealment of risk and by the seemingly guaranteed revenue from HB6, FirstEnergy stock traded at artificially high prices, and its credit ratings improved with S&P, Moody’s, and Fitch. FirstEnergy used the inflated prices to issue $2.5 billion in stock and $2.5 billion in debt securities.”

— Federal appellate court opinion

“While FirstEnergy was making these clandestine contributions, it allegedly misled its shareholders about the nature of its political activity. In urging shareholders to vote against [a lobbying transparency] proposal, FirstEnergy referred shareholders to its Political Activity Policy, which represented that FirstEnergy ‘complies with all federal and state lobbying registration and disclosure requirements’ and ‘has decision-making and oversight processes in place for political contributions and expenditures to ensure such contributions or expenditures are legally permissible and in the best interests of FirstEnergy.'”

— Federal appellate court opinion, citing SEC filings

“Prosecutors announced that ‘everyone in this room knows who Company A is.'”

— Federal appellate court opinion, quoting prosecutors at the time of the July 2020 criminal charges

The Market Collapse: What Happened When the Lie Broke

The scheme unraveled on July 21, 2020, when federal criminal charges landed against Householder, his political strategist, three lobbyists, and Generation Now. The criminal complaint identified FirstEnergy only as “Company A” — but federal prosecutors looked the media directly in the eye and said “everyone in this room knows who Company A is.”

FirstEnergy’s stock dropped nearly 35% over July 21 and 22, 2020. That two-day collapse erased over $7.68 billion (enough to give every Ohio public school student a $2,000 education grant) in market value. The pain continued: another $1.1 billion gone on October 29, 2020, and another $1.3 billion between November 19 and 24, 2020, as more details of the fraud surfaced. By November 2020, every major ratings agency — S&P, Moody’s, and Fitch — had downgraded FirstEnergy’s credit to junk status. Investors, including pension funds representing workers and retirees, lost billions.

Two defendants pleaded guilty to the federal racketeering conspiracy, admitting they committed criminal acts to conceal the payments made to Generation Now. Generation Now itself pleaded guilty. FirstEnergy fired multiple senior executives for violating company policy and “code of conduct” — an almost comical understatement for participating in a federal racketeering conspiracy.

Societal Impact Mapping

Public Health: The Hidden Cost of Keeping Failing Plants Online

HB6 existed specifically to prevent FirstEnergy from decommissioning its two nuclear power plants. Decommissioning would have triggered “billions of dollars in direct expenses and future environmental liabilities” — costs FirstEnergy refused to pay. By bribing its way to a bailout, FirstEnergy successfully transferred those costs and risks onto Ohio ratepayers and onto the state itself. The plants were kept operational not because they were safe or efficient, but because FirstEnergy had purchased the political infrastructure to force everyone else to subsidize them.

The nuclear plants carried long-term environmental liabilities that FirstEnergy had been trying to escape through bankruptcy courts before resorting to bribery. Ohio consumers were made to fund the ongoing operation of facilities whose decommissioning costs had already been described as climbing into the hundreds of millions of dollars — with no transparent accounting of what those future cleanup obligations would actually mean for public health or the environment in surrounding communities.

Economic Inequality: The Ratepayer Shakedown

Ohio House Bill 6 was a direct wealth transfer from Ohio’s working population to a corporation. The $1.3 billion (enough to provide free home energy assistance to roughly 1.3 million low-income households for a full year) ratepayer-funded subsidy was embedded in law, meaning every Ohioan who paid an electric bill was contributing to it whether they knew about it or not. Low-income households, who spend a far higher proportion of their income on utility costs than wealthy ones, carried a disproportionate share of this forced subsidy.

The $700 million (enough to eliminate medical debt for tens of thousands of families) “decoupling” provision made the economic extraction even more brazen. Decoupling allowed FirstEnergy to charge artificially inflated electricity rates regardless of actual market conditions. This is not how a competitive market works. This is how a captured regulatory environment works — one where the regulator who is supposed to protect consumers from price gouging has been paid $4.3 million (enough to fund a full public defender’s office for years) by the company he is supposed to regulate.

Meanwhile, FirstEnergy used its fraudulently inflated stock price to raise $5 billion total ($2.5 billion in new stock, $2.5 billion in new debt) from investors who had no idea the company’s apparent financial health was built on concealed criminal activity. When the scheme collapsed, ordinary investors — including pension funds representing teachers, laborers, and municipal workers — absorbed catastrophic losses.

The Cost of a Conscience: What FirstEnergy Chose to Spend

What Now? Names, Watchlists, and Next Steps

Executives Named in the Source Document

The following individuals were named as defendants in the federal securities litigation. Their corporate roles at the time of the scheme are recorded in the court record.

• Charles E. Jones — Former Chief Executive Officer, FirstEnergy Corporation. Jones made numerous public statements about FirstEnergy’s “meaningful dialogue” with Ohio legislators while the bribery operation was running. He was among those fired.
• Steven E. Strah — Named defendant, FirstEnergy Corporation executive.
• K. Jon Taylor — Named defendant, FirstEnergy Corporation executive.
• Jason Lisowski — Named defendant, FirstEnergy Corporation executive.
• Donald Schneider — Named defendant. Among those who pleaded guilty to the racketeering conspiracy, admitting to criminal acts to conceal the nature and source of payments to Generation Now.
• John Judge — Named defendant, FirstEnergy Corporation.
• James F. Pearson — Named defendant, former FirstEnergy officer or director.
• George M. Smart, Paul T. Addison, Michael J. Anderson, Steven J. Demetriou, Julia L. Johnson, Donald T. Misheff, Thomas N. Mitchell, James F. O’Neil III, Christopher D. Pappas, Sandra Pianalto, Luis A. Reyes, Jerry Sue Thornton, Leslie M. Turner — All named defendants as current or former FirstEnergy directors or officers.

The Regulatory and Political Players

• Larry Householder — Former Speaker of the Ohio House of Representatives. Arrested and charged in July 2020. Federal racketeering conviction affirmed by the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals in 2025.
• Sam Randazzo — Former Chairman of the Public Utilities Commission of Ohio. Received a $4.3 million (enough to purchase a private island) bribe from FirstEnergy. Named in the scheme.
• Generation Now — The 501(c)(4) shell organization that pleaded guilty to receiving money from “Company A” (FirstEnergy) in exchange for official political action.

Watchlist: Agencies That Should Be Paying Attention

• U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ): Already prosecuted the political operatives. The corporate accountability question remains open for full public scrutiny.
• Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC): FirstEnergy filed materially false statements with the SEC across multiple years. The SEC’s enforcement role in holding corporations — not just their middlemen — accountable matters here.
• Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC): The corruption of state-level utility regulators through bribery is a direct threat to the integrity of energy markets at every level.
• Ohio Public Utilities Commission (PUCO): The institution Randazzo ran while allegedly on FirstEnergy’s payroll. Its structural independence from corporate influence demands scrutiny and reform.
• State Attorneys General: Ohio ratepayers who paid artificially inflated electricity rates under HB6 may have grounds for consumer protection claims.

The Ohio bill can be found at House Bill 6 | 136th General Assembly | Ohio Legislature

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