Sep 24, 2009

Visualizing Indictments



The FBI and the Department of Justice have now released three indictments in the ongoing investigation of corruption in the Cuyahoga County Government Offices in NE Ohio. I have written previously on this project called Operation Air Ball.

One of my researchers, Andrejs Van Nostran, and I took the three indictments and mined them for network data. We wanted to do a social network analysis of this complex and unfolding story.

People and organizations were the nodes. Projects, events, relationships and money flows were the links. The network map above shows just the key people in the three indictments. We hid the organization nodes for this view. Links show people that had business ties to each other. Most of the business ties shown had both legal and illegal transactions flowing across them, a few links carried only illegal transactions. Notice the two most central players have not yet been named by the Federal Prosecutor. They are referred to as PO 1 and PO 2 -- Public Official 1 and Public Official 2. More indictments are expected. As we get them we will add the data to our map, and reveal the identities behind the codes, as they are made explicit.

The Cleveland Plain Dealer has done a good job on reporting the corruption probe. Their analysis of the identity of PO 1 and PO 2 is available. The Cleveland public radio station -- WCPN 90.3 FM, ideastream -- had two recent programs on the corruption scandal with local experts and politicians.

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