On February 26, 2020, Alexander 'P.G.' Sittenfeld — a Princeton- and Oxford-educated Cincinnati City Councilmember serving since 2011 and the acknowledged frontrunner in the city's mayoral race — was arrested on federal public corruption charges stemming from a two-year FBI undercover sting operation targeting City Hall. On November 19, 2020, a six-count federal indictment was returned charging Sittenfeld with two counts of honest services wire fraud, two counts of bribery, and two counts of attempted extortion by a government official, after investigators documented that he had accepted eight $5,000 checks — totaling $40,000 — from limited liability companies controlled by undercover FBI agents posing as out-of-town real estate investors seeking Council approval for a sports-betting venue at 435 Elm Street in downtown Cincinnati. On audio and video recordings played at trial in U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Ohio before Judge Douglas R. Cole, Sittenfeld told the undercover agents he could 'deliver the votes' on the project in exchange for the PAC contributions. The jury convicted on one count of bribery and one count of attempted extortion on July 8, 2022. Judge Cole sentenced Sittenfeld to 16 months in federal prison on October 10, 2023; he reported to FCI Ashland in Ashland, Kentucky on January 2, 2024. The conviction ended the political career of a man who, at the time of his arrest, had been considered one of the most promising young Democrats in Ohio — a politician whose own recorded words, not a cooperating witness's account, sealed his fate.