Woman’s identity taken by state agents
Strip-club sting was legal, Miami County official says
Sunday, April 10, 2005
Bill Bush THE COLUMBUS DISPATCH
Authorities gave Michelle Szuhay another woman’s identity to use while undercover.
Haley Dawson has never been a stripper.
But Ohio liquor-control agents took her identity and gave it to a 22-year-old college student who they had recruited to work undercover as a nude dancer.
As part of an investigation that resulted in nothing more than misdemeanor charges, police paid University of Dayton criminal-justice student Michelle Szuhay $100 a night to take it all off in early 2003 — as liquor-control officers drank beer and watched in the audience for three months, court papers show.
Other officers watched her strip on the Internet, using an account created under the identity of a dead man.
The officers did all this by using Dawson’s driver’s license and Social Security number to hide Szuhay’s identity while she worked at the targeted strip club, the now-closed Total Xposure in Troy.
To Dawson’s father, David Dawson, "It certainly looks like identity theft."
But it’s not, said Miami County Prosecutor Gary Nasal.
Pointing to a 2002 change in Ohio’s law aimed at fighting identity theft, Nasal said police are allowed to assume anyone’s identity as long as it’s part of an investigation.
"I don’t know much about law, but I would say that’s just baloney," said David Dawson, who lives part of the year in Columbus. He is the brother of Mike Dawson, the chief policy adviser to U.S. Sen. Mike DeWine.
Ohio Rep. Jim Hughes, the Columbus Republican who sponsored the change, also disagrees with Nasal, as do the American Civil Liberties Union and a lobbyist who pushed for the legal change.
"It was not intended for that, I can tell you that," Hughes said.
The law was changed to help solve credit-card fraud and other identitytheft crimes, said John Van Dorn, lobbyist for HSBC North America, one of the banks that championed the change.
As with any form of identity theft, the consequences could have been "enormous" to Haley Dawson, said Jeff Gamso, legal director of the Ohio ACLU.
"What (lawmakers) didn’t mean is that the police could actually engage in identy theft," Gamso said. "Anybody who gave it a moment’s thought would know that they didn’t mean that.
"And that’s exactly what they did (to Haley Dawson), and if they’re doing that, it’s an outrage. What a gross invasion of privacy by the government."
The state agency that oversees the liquor-control agents who gave Haley Dawson’s driver’s license to the Troy police now is investigating the situation, which they became aware of Thursday from The Dispatch.
"There is not a policy from our division that says that we have the latitude" to pose as a real person, said Richard Cologie, assistant agent in charge with the Ohio Investigative Unit’s central office. The unit is a part of the Ohio Department of Public Safety.
It is unclear how liquor-control agents — sworn law-enforcement officers who investigate illegal drinking activity — obtained Haley Dawson’s license, Cologie said. Although these agents work to enforce Ohio’s liquor laws, they are separate from the Department of Commerce’s Division of Liquor Control, which licenses businesses that sell alcohol.
Haley Dawson, 26, could not be reached. Her father said she now lives in Cincinnati and did not want to comment for this story.
Szuhay, reached at her home in the Cleveland suburb of North Olmsted, also declined to comment.
Totally exposed
Miami County Prosecutor Nasal acknowledged Dawson could have suffered tax or other problems because her identity was used.
He called it a "screw-up," but he made no apologies for the lengths that he, police and liquor-control agents went to in shutting down Total Xposure, long a thorn in the side of officials in Troy, a 22,000-resident city north of Dayton.
The strip joint billed itself as a private club where patrons brought their own alcohol and paid a fee to have it served to them. Ohio doesn’t allow clubs to sell alcohol if dancers strip naked.
Police thought Total Xposure was linked to drug trafficking and prostitution — charges which the investigation could not prove, Nasal acknowledged.
The only allegations that stuck were two misdemeanor charges of furnishing alcohol without a permit, which resulted in a $200 fine, and a civil-nuisance charge that shut the club for one year and led to the confiscation of its property.
In order to avoid further charges, the club owners agreed to pay $15,000 to the city and state and leave Miami County — Nasal’s goal from the start. That put the entire case to rest at the end of 2003.
"I don’t apologize for the investigation and the conduct," Nasal said. "The result speaks for itself."
Nasal said it’s easy to look back now and assume he could have achieved the same result without the assistance of an undercover stripper.
"This kind of thing is the type of thing that you only get one shot at," Nasal said. "So you had better do your investigation right from the start."
However, the Troy police said Szuhay almost cost them the investigation when she befriended club employees and began hanging out with them after hours — using Haley Dawson’s driver’s license to be served at bars.
Szuhay was charged by Troy police with perjury and obstructing justice in the case, but the charges were dismissed.
The perjury charge related to an accusation that she lied during her testimony by saying she wasn’t wearing a wig; she was. The obstruction charge stemmed from her associating with club employees during the investigation, said Capt. Chuck Adams, of the Troy Police Department.
She stripped at Total Xposure from February to May 2003 — always under the watchful eyes of liquor-control agents and private investigators in the audience.
Troy police officers, including Adams, watched her strip from the police station using an Internet subscription to the club that they had purchased under the name of a dead man, Adams said.
Police think that also was legal, he said.
Liquor-control agents were sent into the club to purchase private "girl-on-girl" dances; some officials thought those dances were illegal, according to a deposition by Diane Corey, the Dayton-based boss of the agents involved.
Hidden work
The life that Szuhay, now 24, assumed as "Haley Dawson" was very different from the one she portrays of her real self on the University of Dayton’s Web site.
There, she posted a video of herself describing how much she was learning during an unpaid internship for the U.S. Marshals Service. She also posted photos of her paid security internship with the NASA Glenn Research Center near Cleveland.
Szuhay had aspirations of becoming a police officer, Adams said.
She had worked undercover and even stripped before, he said, but he thinks that she started having second thoughts about this mission — especially as its conclusion and a very public trial neared.
"Watching her dance was quite different than the other girls," Adams said. "She was doing some things I think she was ashamed of. . . . I think it was more about what she thought her family would think, and her dad in particular.
"We told her it would almost be a miracle that people would not learn her true identity."
Adams said police were unaware until this week that Szuhay’s obstruction of justice charge had been dismissed — apparently because a police officer failed to show up at a hearing. Troy police and Nasal plan to refile it, Adams said.
"There were numerous meetings — police department, myself and her — where it was explained that the only thing that we wanted her to do was go in, observe and tell us the truth," Nasal said. "I guess the bottom line is we found her difficult to handle."
Szuhay "may have been of tender years," but Nasal has no sympathy for her, he said.
"She sold herself to us as a very serious, confidential informant."
