Whatever happened to prosecutors’ pursuit of a tougher sentence for Joanne Schneider, the North Royalton woman who was sentenced in March to three years in prison for bilking investors out of tens of millions of dollars? Cuyahoga County prosecutors initially agreed to the lighter sentence as part of a plea agreement. But now they are asking an appeals court to intervene and force the trial judge to increase Schneider’s sentence to 10 years behind bars.

Prosecutors filed their request in April in the 8th District Court of Appeals within days of filing a motion in Common Pleas Court asking Judge Eileen A. Gallagher to re-sentence Schneider. Gallagher has not ruled on the motion, and the case has not yet been scheduled for argument in the appellate court.

In the appeal, prosecutors say that they, defense lawyers and the judge all misread the law when Schneider, 68, was sentenced. All believed three years was the minimum sentence for engaging in a corrupt pattern of activity and other charges. That assumption is correct in most cases, prosecutors said. But the sentence rises to a minimum of 10 years in prison when the pattern of corruption includes other crimes that are first-degree felonies.

Several of the 13 charges to which Schneider pleaded guilty qualify as first-degree felonies, prosecutors argued.

For two decades, Schneider ran an enterprise centered on using investor money to buy, rehabilitate and rent properties. But the payoffs often came from new investors’ money in what prosecutors called a typical Ponzi scheme.

Schneider’s attorney, Ian Friedman, argued in his response to the appeal that the state got what it bargained for in Schneider’s case, and that he “fails to appreciate how achieving one’s desired result can be adequately characterized as a manifest miscarriage of justice.”

By failing to object to the sentence at the time it was issued, prosecutors forfeited their right to appeal it, Friedman said among his arguments. And the court did not determine which offenses in the indictment were included in the pattern of corruption, he said.

Also, Schneider made statements at her sentencing publicly admitting her guilt. If the sentence were rescinded and the case went to trial, any presumption of Schneider’s innocence would be destroyed, Friedman said.