Scioto County is in the middle of an EMS crisis—but while residents were scrambling for emergency services, one of the county’s top officials was allegedly lining his pockets with cash meant for ambulances.
Economic Development Director Robert Horton, who also heads the Southern Ohio Port Authority (SOPA), has been hit with a bombshell indictment, along with his wife Lioubov Horton, over an elaborate scheme involving kickbacks, falsified records, burner phones, and secret meetings.
According to prosecutors, Horton promised the Minford Emergency Ambulance Service, a nonprofit organization, that he would manage their new building project for free. But behind closed doors, he rigged the bidding process to steer contracts toward a business that paid him off under the table. The bribes were disguised as “sales commissions” to his wife’s company, RPL Consulting Management, Sales LLC—a classic case of “you scratch my back, I’ll scratch yours.”
When investigators started sniffing around, Horton and his co-conspirators didn’t just deny everything—they allegedly rewrote history. A year after official Port Authority meeting minutes were created, Horton secretly altered them to make it look like he had disclosed his shady deals all along. Then, when businesses involved got slapped with subpoenas, Horton ordered them to destroy incriminating records and even had fake documents created to throw investigators off the trail.
And if that wasn’t enough, prosecutors say the whole crew—including Horton, his wife, and a group of unnamed accomplices—used burner phones to coordinate their cover-up, ensuring their dirty dealings stayed in the shadows.
Now, with 15 charges against Robert Horton and 12 against Lioubov Horton, the county is left wondering: How deep does this corruption go? And more importantly—what will it take to clean up this mess?
While the unknown accomplices haven’t been indicted yet, sources tell us that’s coming soon. In fact, publicly filed documents strongly hint at who they might be, but we’ll hold off on naming names—for now. Stay tuned, because this scandal is far from over.
