In 1993, 39-year-old Robert Rizzo arrived in town trailing the vague whiff of scandal. For a time he seemed like the man the working-class city needed — until he became an ‘unelected and unaccountable czar.’ “Rizzo and seven other Bell leaders past and present are charged with looting more than $5.5 million from one of the county’s poorest municipalities. It is a hydra-headed scandal that has spawned seven federal, state and county investigations and transformed a forgotten suburb into a synonym for rogue governance. It has resonated as a morality tale in which Rizzo is cast as a greed-crazed, cigar-chomping puppet master who cheated his way to an $800,000 salary and a 10-acre horse ranch.”