Residency issue, criminal probe involving credit card hound small town prosecutor
When he ran for Iron County district attorney in 2016, Matt Tingstad’s opponent called him a carpetbagger, since Tingstad lived across the border in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan and wasn’t even licensed in Wisconsin.
Tingstad and another U.P. candidate, Ironwood’s librarian, could each campaign without moving. Wisconsin only requires they be residents by the time they take office if elected.
Tingstad, a former professional snowmobiler, won the race, and by December he’d joined the State Bar of Wisconsin, but some question whether he ever did move to Iron County.
A retired Iron County sheriff’s deputy formally asked Attorney General Josh Kaul to investigate, based on a few facts:
◼In records of their divorce case, Tingstad’s wife says they still live together in Wakefield, Michigan.
◼The address Tingstad lists in the divorce, and his re-election papers, is an equipment yard for an oil company six miles from Hurley, with only a pole barn as a possibly habitable structure.
◼Property records for the couple’s Wakefield home show Tingstad’s mailing address as Bessemer, Michigan, and that he’s getting a Michigan homestead tax credit in 2019 and 2018 because he claimed the Wakefield house as his sole residence.
◼The State Bar of Wisconsin lists Tingstad’s address as the DA’s office, but the Michigan bar, where he remains a member, lists his address as Bessemer.
◼Tingstad hadn’t registered to vote in Iron County.
◼At a major snowmobile competition in 2017, Tingstad was listed as being from Bessemer.
State law provides that anyone with
reason to believe an official does not reside within their jurisdiction can file a complaint with the attorney general, who can move to have the office declared vacant, so the governor can appoint a legal occupant.
Last fall, Kaul passed on the complaint and told the retired deputy, Darrell Petrusha, he could pursue it on his own per the state’s obscure “quo warranto” statute. Kaul’s office did not reply to a request to discuss the decision.
Tingstad told a reporter he doesn’t want to talk about where he lives.
But that may not be Tingstad’s most immediate concern, something else he declined to discuss with a reporter.
DA under criminal investigation
Petrusha, 56, and Hurley’s former longtime mayor, Joseph Pinardi, 70, are being prosecuted by Tingstad for the use of a city credit card years ago, one that the current administration didn’t know existed. Petrusha also served as Hurley’s fire chief.
Both men have pleaded not guilty and note they paid the bills for all personal use of the card.
In his defense, Petrusha’s attorney, Steven Lucareli, a former prosecutor, tried to have Tingstad disqualified last fall because he was under criminal investigation for an action in the case.
Lucareli had complained that Tingstad abused the legal process in September by sending a bogus subpoena to a Milwaukee lawyer representing the credit card’s bank. He would have had to drive five hours to Hurley for a hearing that didn’t exist — unless he signed an affidavit Tingstad prepared that characterized some facts in the state’s favor in the Petrusha case.
A judge quashed the subpoena, and the Oneida County Sheriff’s Office later investigated and found probable cause to charge Tingstad. A judge in another county appointed a special prosecutor in March. That lawyer, Roy Korte of Milwaukee, said he might have a decision about charges this week.
The court records related to the petition and Korte’s appointment have all been ordered sealed as if it was a secret John Doe proceeding, though it was initiated under a different statute.
If you look for a John Doe case in Iron County on the state’s online court records site, the only one that comes up is sealed by order of Iron County Judge Anthony Stella — coincidentally, Tingstad’s second opponent in the 2016 DA’s election. Gov. Tony Evers appointed Stella to the bench last September after the incumbent died unexpectedly.
After a visit from the Oneida sheriff ’s investigators, Tingstad wrote to the judge and accused Lucareli of trying to “bully and threaten his way” to a trial advantage and bemoaned the fact Lucareli had been looking at public records regarding Tingstad’s residence.
“I respectfully request the Court advise Mr. Lucareli to refrain from irrelevant personal investigations into every aspect of my life,” Tingstad wrote. “Mr. Lucareli is attempting to intimidate me, harass my office, and alter the prosecution in this matter.”
Last year, Lucareli withdrew from the case when he sensed Tingstad was turning it into a personal grudge against him, which he felt would hurt his client, now represented by Aaron Nelson.
Small town politics
Back in 2007, when the city — population less than 1,500 — was considering the purchase of a new fire truck, Pinardi, the mayor, obtained a credit card in the name of Hurley Fire Department, so it would have a way to pay for expenses related to visiting Oshkosh about the truck.
They used it for the trip. Pinardi paid the bills and was reimbursed by the city. Petrusha continued using the card — for more than $10,000 in personal expenses over several years, according to the complaint. But he got and paid the bills, which were delivered to City Hall and routed to him as the fire chief.
Until 2016. That’s when Pinardi filed for bankruptcy. He was issued the card and the Fire Department was on the account only for billing purposes, Lucareli says, and Petrusha was an authorized user.
Pinardi later told investigators he assumed the outstanding bill got discharged in bankruptcy. He wasn’t sure; he never used the card. He told investigators he never specifically told Petrusha he could, or could not, use the card for personal expenses.
As mayor, he also cast the tie-breaking vote to purchase the fire truck, remarking once that city could save a million dollars if it got rid of its police department and contracted with Iron County Sheriff’s Department. Lucareli said bad feelings lingered. “People will harbor grudges for years and wait for someone to get in the crosshairs and then lower the boom,” he said.
In January 2018, Hurley’s clerk tried to get a credit card police could use to refuel when the city’s pumps were closed. The credit card company said no because it had to write off $7,800 on a previous card associated with the city. The clerk asked, “What card?” Two months later, the state Division of Criminal Investigations opened an investigation. Special Agent Loreen Glaman got credit card statements and talked to Pinardi, who explained the history of the card, and how he presumed the outstanding balance was discharged during his bankruptcy.
But Glaman saw no record of the card in Pinardi’s bankruptcy filings and no record of it in TransUnion’s credit reporting record for him, according to the criminal complaint.
According to the complaints against Petrusha and Pinardi, the card was issued to the city — because the fire department didn’t have its own tax identification number — and they were each listed as authorized users.
But in a separate civil action, the judge declared the account belonged to Pinardi, and the city’s ID number was only for billing purposes, so both Pinardi’s and Petrusha’s charges showed up on a single statement.
By the time the April 2018 Hurley mayoral election rolled around, rumors of the credit card investigation were rampant. Pinardi lost by one vote. The next month, Petrusha was charged with theft in a business setting, and identity theft, both felonies.
The following February, after Petrusha’s preliminary hearing, Tingstad charged Pinardi with unauthorized use of an Employer Identification Number, as party to a crime, a felony, and two misdemeanors, false swearing and obstructing an officer.
The complaint accuses Pinardi of misleading investigators who were trying to build a case against Petrusha.
Lucareli called it retaliation, for Petrusha fighting his case, and Pinardi refusing to implicate him in a crime.
Petrusha’s case is set for trial in August. No date is set in Pinardi’s case.