Spotlight: Ongoing Poconos Stories
A directory of Pocono Review’s Spotlight topic pages — ongoing story threads organized by county, so you can follow a running case or issue in one place.
Monroe County — 3 topics
Core5
Pocono Township approved Core5’s massive Warner Road warehouse after a three-year battle. This outlet later built the case that the facility is actually a data center disguised as a warehouse.
View the Core5 spotlight page →
Mike Velardi
Mike Velardi served as a Pocono Township Commissioner until his resignation, and this outlet tracked a run of conduct questions along the way. He threw a tantrum after the board pushed back on his plan to regulate away voters’ rights.
View the Mike Velardi spotlight page →
Pocono Township Commissioners
Pocono Township’s Board of Commissioners makes the decisions that shape daily life in the township, and this outlet has tracked how some of those decisions hold up. Residents still don’t know where the money went after a library tax was collected for nearly a year with no library open to spend it on.
View the Pocono Township Commissioners spotlight page →
Wayne County — 15 topics
Candy Viola
This outlet documented a pattern of intimidation tied to Candy Viola, a PPP affiliate — starting with a piece examining how fear silences dissent in a small town. Viola harassed journalists, threatened a politician, and concealed her connection to People’s Playground Project while doing it.
View the Candy Viola spotlight page →
DA A.G. Howell
Alfred J. Howell has been Wayne County’s district attorney through a run of scrutiny this outlet has tracked closely, starting with a federal lawsuit accusing him of using criminal charges to collect his own father’s legal bills in the prosecution of Joseph Cordaro.
View the DA A.G. Howell spotlight page →
Derek Williams
Derek Williams was a reporter before he became Honesdale’s mayor. Since taking office, this outlet has tracked where money moves around him — starting with his employer sending $171,500 to his girlfriend’s arts organization, then steering another $72,500 the same way months later.
View the Derek Williams spotlight page →
Ellis Law Group
This outlet spent two parts investigating Ellis Law Group’s footprint in Wayne County’s courts — a firm whose name keeps surfacing on both sides of the same cases, from plea deals to judicial appointments.
View the Ellis Law Group spotlight page →
Hawley Arson Case
This outlet tracked a house fire near Lake Wallenpaupack in Lakeville, Wayne County, that led to an arson charge. Responding crews faced hazards of their own — a tanker crashed on icy roads en route to the fire.
View the Hawley Arson Case spotlight page →
Honesdale Borough Council
Honesdale’s Borough Council sets the budget and rules that govern daily life in town, and this outlet has tracked how those decisions hold up under scrutiny. In one case, the council considered spending as much as $80,000 on ballistic helmets — a figure this outlet found was inconsistent with the actual cost.
View the Honesdale Borough Council spotlight page →
Lisa Glover
Lisa Glover spent years working for a Google-founded nonprofit before turning her focus to Honesdale, where she has become one of the borough’s most consequential unelected figures — a founder of People’s Playground Project and a driving force behind the redesign of Central Park.
View the Lisa Glover spotlight page →
People’s Playground Project
People’s Playground Project began as a resident-led push to redesign the playground in Honesdale’s Central Park. Reporting since has traced the layers of people actually driving the project, including cofounder Kendra Nelson, who has gone on to a position running Honesdale itself, and Lisa Glover, whose record this outlet tracks separately.
View the People’s Playground Project spotlight page →
PSP Honesdale Accountability
This outlet examined how Pennsylvania State Police’s Honesdale barracks investigated an antisemitic email hoax. A Waymart man used a fake email account to frame a former coworker, sending a Honesdale business a message with swastikas and threats — leading PSP Honesdale to arrest the wrong person before the real sender confessed.
View the PSP Honesdale Accountability spotlight page →
The Hideout
The Hideout is a gated community of roughly 3,600 homes in Salem Township, governed by its own property owners association and staffed with a private public safety force. In September 2025, Hideout public safety officer José Duran was shot and killed responding to an active shooter call.
View the The Hideout spotlight page →
Van-Valkenburg Torture Case
A Honesdale man was jailed on $100,000 bail after allegedly torturing his girlfriend with a shovel and a staple gun in a Wayne County basement. This outlet found he had two prior corruption of minors convictions when he later posted bail.
View the Van-Valkenburg Torture Case spotlight page →
Vinny’s Bagels Theft Case
A suspect accused of stealing from Vinny’s Bagels in Wayne County had a prior theft conviction when the case was first postponed, this outlet found. The suspect, identified as Villani, turned out to have four prior theft convictions across Monroe and Lehigh counties.
View the Vinny’s Bagels Theft Case spotlight page →
Wayne County Addiction Treatment
Wayne County spends public money to treat its addiction crisis, but this outlet’s reporting has found that money increasingly flows to fewer providers under murkier terms. The county’s heroin taskforce filed one report accounting for $154,910 with no legal names and no answers about where it went.
View the Wayne County Addiction Treatment spotlight page →
Wayne County Bar Association
The Wayne County Bar Association is the professional association for attorneys practicing in Wayne County, Pennsylvania, and the umbrella for related bodies like Pro Bono Partnerships Inc. This page tracks this outlet’s ongoing coverage of the organization.
View the Wayne County Bar Association spotlight page →
History
This outlet also digs into the region’s less obvious history — stories that don’t always make it into the standard local retelling. Founding Father James Wilson signed the Declaration of Independence and went broke on a stretch of Wayne County creek most people have never heard connected to him.
View the History spotlight page →
Lackawanna County — 1 topic
Tara Glan Case
Tara Glan drove the church van and ran the youth group at Ray of Hope Church in Taylor. Investigators say he used that access to rape five victims — a woman with a documented intellectual disability and four children — over five years.
View the Tara Glan Case spotlight page →
Regional & Multi-County — 6 topics
Data Centers
Warehouses across northeast Pennsylvania are converting into data centers — buildings that collected tax breaks and zoning approval as job-creating warehouses, then employ a fraction of the promised workforce once the servers move in. This outlet has traced the pattern from Stroudsburg to Clifton Township, and counted at least 16 proposed or prepared data center sites across the region.
View the Data Centers spotlight page →
Homeowners Associations
This outlet tracks how homeowners associations across Wayne, Monroe, and Pike counties wield power over the people who live under them. Winona Lakes sued eight homeowners for $51,000 in unpaid dues days before Christmas; Penn Estates filed 37 lawsuits against residents in a single year.
View the Homeowners Associations spotlight page →
Missing Persons
This outlet tracks missing-persons cases across the region, from active searches to cases that have gone unsolved for years. Police are still searching for a missing Stroudsburg man, and a Wayne County teen who vanished at 14 has now been missing for nearly eight years.
View the Missing Persons spotlight page →
Poconos Sex Trafficking Ring
This outlet is tracking a sex trafficking case moving through the Poconos courts, involving three defendants accused of running an operation that transported victims to hotels across Monroe, Lehigh, Luzerne and Lackawanna counties from 2023 through 2025.
View the Poconos Sex Trafficking Ring spotlight page →
PA-8 Congressional Race
Pennsylvania’s 8th Congressional District — covering Lackawanna, Wayne, and Pike counties plus parts of Luzerne and Monroe — is one of the most competitive House races in the country heading into 2026. Cook Political Report has moved it to “Toss Up.”
View the PA-8 Congressional Race spotlight page →
Dan Meuser
Rep. Dan Meuser built his family’s Duryea wheelchair company, Pride Mobility Products, into a $400 million business — then went to Washington and never really left the board.