Post by coots on Dec 11, 2015 18:25:38 GMT -5
Dean Skelos, Adam Skelos Guilty on All Counts
Dean Skelos guilty in corruption case; former state Senate Majority Leader and son now face up to 130 years in prison
The next job Dean Skelos gets for his son will have to be in the prison commissary.
The former state Senate Majority Leader was convicted Friday of bribery, extortion and conspiracy charges for abusing his powerful post to enrich his son. The Manhattan Federal Court jury also convicted his son Adam, 33, of aiding and abetting in the scheme.
The two men stood stone-faced while the verdict was read, but Dean Skelos, as his wife Gail sobbed, reached over and lightly rubbed Adam's shoulder.
The felonious father and son face up to 130 years in prison when they're sentenced by Judge Kimba Wood early next year — the same amount of time former Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver is facing after his conviction on corruption charges last month.
Gov. Cuomo applauded the Skelos result.
“There can be no tolerance for those who use, and seek to use, public service for private gain. The justice system worked today,” he said.
“The convictions of former Speaker Silver and former Majority Leader Skelos should be a wakeup call for the Legislature and it must stop standing in the way of needed reforms,” he stressed.
Skelos lawyer Robert Gage said he will appeal.
"We're obviously very disappointed with the verdict. The next step is pretrial motions. We intend to pursue them vigorously," Gage said. Dean Skelos, looking misty-eyed and grim, stood next to him outside the federal courthouse on Worth St.
But Cynthia Nehlsen, the jury forewoman, said she felt the entire process had been clean.
"We wanted to give them a fair trial and we did," she told the Daily News.
The jury never struggled with a split decision, she said, although they did ask to hear some additional recordings.
"We just wanted to make sure of our decisions. There were a lot of things," she said. "The state gave a great timeline for us."
Within an hour of the verdict, Dean Skelos' name had been scraped off his office door in the Albany Senate and the Senate website updated his bio to read as a "former state senator."
U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara tweeted out his reaction.
"How many prosecutions will it take before Albany gives the people of New York the honest government they deserve?" he said.
Skelos is the 12th statewide elected official to be convicted in a prosecution brought by the Manhattan U.S. Attorney's office since Bharara was appointed to the post in 2009.
Back in January, Skelos, 67, and Silver, 71, were two of the most powerful men in the state, two-thirds of the "three men in a room" with Gov. Cuomo, controlling the state's budget and policy. Both were brought down by Bharara, who was a frequent attendee at their three-week-long trial, which started Nov. 17.
Prosecutors said the pair started running the "Skelos shakedown playbook" in 2010, after the Republicans reclaimed control of the state senate.
Skelos met with billionaire Leonard Litwin, the founder of real estate giant Glenwood Management, and his chief counsel Charlie Dorego to thank them for their support. They discussed tax breaks that were vital to the company that were coming up for renewal in the coming months — and at the end of the meeting, Skelos asked the pair to give some insurance title work to his son.
It was a request he'd repeat a dozen times in the months that followed, prosecutor Tatiana Martins said in her opening statement.
Dorego said he felt "badgered," and eventually arranged for Adam to get a $4,000-a-month job with a company called AbTech that the Litwin family were part-owners of. But when that deal didn't come together fast enough, Skelos again pressured Dorego for money for his son, who he said was strapped for cash — even though he was pulling in well over $100,000 a year.
Dorego testified he then arranged for Adam to get a $20,000 "referral fee" for a real estate deal he had nothing to do with. Adam "didn't have to lift a finger, except to grab the money," Martins said. But it wasn't enough.
After AbTech landed a $12 million contract with Nassau County with Adam's help, Dorego testified a "furious" Adam Skelos called him up and demanded that the company pay him more cash, or the Skeloses would decide the deal wasn't worth their time.
AbTech exec Bjornulf White said he felt the company was being "held hostage" — but they had no choice but to pay up. Adam's salary was upped to $10,000 a month.
And when Nassau County was slow coming up with the cash on the contract, Dean Skelos personally called county higher-ups to get them to start paying up. He even pushed County Executive Ed Mangano on the issue while they were at the funeral of slain NYPD cop Wenjian Liu, a wiretapped phone call showed.
"All claims that are in will be taken care of," Dean told his son in a call from the funeral.
But Dorego wasn't the only one the Skeloses preyed upon. They also took advantage of an old friend of Dean Skelos' named Anthony Bonomo, who was the CEO of a medical malpractice insurance company called PRI.
Dean Skelos initially asked Bonomo to steer some of the firm's court reporting work to Adam Skelos's girlfriend, who would later become his wife. The Long Island Republican later told Bonomo that his son needed a job with health benefits.
With PRI dependent on recurring state legislation, Bonomo testified he thought it would help him stay in the senator's good graces if he offered his son a job — a $78,000 a year gig as a project manager.
Adam Skelos's lawyer, Christopher Conniff, acknowledged it was "a good deed that quickly turned into nightmare" for Bonomo.
Adam's supervisor, Christopher Curcio, said that on Adam's first day of work on Jan. 2, 2013, the surly scion introduced himself by saying, "You know who I am. I'm Adam Skelos." He also announced he was only working two days a week — and he didn't even do that.
Curcio's logbook showed Adam would sometimes show up around noon before heading out to lunch and never returning. On another occasion, he showed up for five minutes and left.
When Curcio insisted he had to come in to the office, Adam called his dad, who called Bonomo to complain that the supervisor had been "picking on him." When Bonomo told the senator his son hadn't been bothering to show up to work, the unfazed Skelos told him "to work it out."
Bonomo said he felt that meant he couldn't take any action against Adam for treating his work like a no-show job. "I didn't want to have a problem in Albany," he testified.
Adam kept not coming in, and in April former U.S. Sen. Al D'Amato — a PRI lobbyist and decades-long Republican power broker — went to talk to Skelos about the issue.
He said he told Skelos his son was "not showing up at work" and was "disruptive" when he did, and that he could wind up getting fired.
Skelos told D'Amato his son "really needed the job" — but didn't say he'd do anything about his loafing.
The problem came to a head two months later, when Curcio again told Adam he had to actually come to work.
"Talk to me like that again and I'm going to smash your f---ing head in," Curcio quoted the ornery offspring as saying. "Guys like you aren't fit to shine my shoes."
The outburst led to Adam being demoted to a "consultant" two months later — after Bonomo got his dad's blessing to make the move.
In their closing arguments, lawyers for the father and son maintained "no crime was committed" — Dean Skelos had just tried to help his son the way any father would, and hadn't crossed any legal lines.
Prosecutor Jason Masimore disagreed, telling jurors in his closing argument that Skelos had used his power to intimidate companies "he could make or break" into lining his son's pockets. Adam Skelos pocketed over $300,000 from the various schemes.
"If the senator couldn't manage his complicated, able bodied adult son that's fine," Masimore said. "Just don't take that drama to Albany and corrupt the top levels of state government with it."
Senate Democratic Leader Andrea Stewart-Cousins said this latest conviction offered even more proof of the dire need for ethics reform.
"We need to implement a full-time Legislature and restrict legislators' outside income; we need to close the LLC loophole; we need to prohibit taxpayer reimbursement of campaign and legal defense funds and strip pensions from public officials convicted of corruption," she said in a statement."
Are Mangan & Coumo next?
Dean Skelos guilty in corruption case; former state Senate Majority Leader and son now face up to 130 years in prison
The next job Dean Skelos gets for his son will have to be in the prison commissary.
The former state Senate Majority Leader was convicted Friday of bribery, extortion and conspiracy charges for abusing his powerful post to enrich his son. The Manhattan Federal Court jury also convicted his son Adam, 33, of aiding and abetting in the scheme.
The two men stood stone-faced while the verdict was read, but Dean Skelos, as his wife Gail sobbed, reached over and lightly rubbed Adam's shoulder.
The felonious father and son face up to 130 years in prison when they're sentenced by Judge Kimba Wood early next year — the same amount of time former Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver is facing after his conviction on corruption charges last month.
Gov. Cuomo applauded the Skelos result.
“There can be no tolerance for those who use, and seek to use, public service for private gain. The justice system worked today,” he said.
“The convictions of former Speaker Silver and former Majority Leader Skelos should be a wakeup call for the Legislature and it must stop standing in the way of needed reforms,” he stressed.
Skelos lawyer Robert Gage said he will appeal.
"We're obviously very disappointed with the verdict. The next step is pretrial motions. We intend to pursue them vigorously," Gage said. Dean Skelos, looking misty-eyed and grim, stood next to him outside the federal courthouse on Worth St.
But Cynthia Nehlsen, the jury forewoman, said she felt the entire process had been clean.
"We wanted to give them a fair trial and we did," she told the Daily News.
The jury never struggled with a split decision, she said, although they did ask to hear some additional recordings.
"We just wanted to make sure of our decisions. There were a lot of things," she said. "The state gave a great timeline for us."
Within an hour of the verdict, Dean Skelos' name had been scraped off his office door in the Albany Senate and the Senate website updated his bio to read as a "former state senator."
U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara tweeted out his reaction.
"How many prosecutions will it take before Albany gives the people of New York the honest government they deserve?" he said.
Skelos is the 12th statewide elected official to be convicted in a prosecution brought by the Manhattan U.S. Attorney's office since Bharara was appointed to the post in 2009.
Back in January, Skelos, 67, and Silver, 71, were two of the most powerful men in the state, two-thirds of the "three men in a room" with Gov. Cuomo, controlling the state's budget and policy. Both were brought down by Bharara, who was a frequent attendee at their three-week-long trial, which started Nov. 17.
Prosecutors said the pair started running the "Skelos shakedown playbook" in 2010, after the Republicans reclaimed control of the state senate.
Skelos met with billionaire Leonard Litwin, the founder of real estate giant Glenwood Management, and his chief counsel Charlie Dorego to thank them for their support. They discussed tax breaks that were vital to the company that were coming up for renewal in the coming months — and at the end of the meeting, Skelos asked the pair to give some insurance title work to his son.
It was a request he'd repeat a dozen times in the months that followed, prosecutor Tatiana Martins said in her opening statement.
Dorego said he felt "badgered," and eventually arranged for Adam to get a $4,000-a-month job with a company called AbTech that the Litwin family were part-owners of. But when that deal didn't come together fast enough, Skelos again pressured Dorego for money for his son, who he said was strapped for cash — even though he was pulling in well over $100,000 a year.
Dorego testified he then arranged for Adam to get a $20,000 "referral fee" for a real estate deal he had nothing to do with. Adam "didn't have to lift a finger, except to grab the money," Martins said. But it wasn't enough.
After AbTech landed a $12 million contract with Nassau County with Adam's help, Dorego testified a "furious" Adam Skelos called him up and demanded that the company pay him more cash, or the Skeloses would decide the deal wasn't worth their time.
AbTech exec Bjornulf White said he felt the company was being "held hostage" — but they had no choice but to pay up. Adam's salary was upped to $10,000 a month.
And when Nassau County was slow coming up with the cash on the contract, Dean Skelos personally called county higher-ups to get them to start paying up. He even pushed County Executive Ed Mangano on the issue while they were at the funeral of slain NYPD cop Wenjian Liu, a wiretapped phone call showed.
"All claims that are in will be taken care of," Dean told his son in a call from the funeral.
But Dorego wasn't the only one the Skeloses preyed upon. They also took advantage of an old friend of Dean Skelos' named Anthony Bonomo, who was the CEO of a medical malpractice insurance company called PRI.
Dean Skelos initially asked Bonomo to steer some of the firm's court reporting work to Adam Skelos's girlfriend, who would later become his wife. The Long Island Republican later told Bonomo that his son needed a job with health benefits.
With PRI dependent on recurring state legislation, Bonomo testified he thought it would help him stay in the senator's good graces if he offered his son a job — a $78,000 a year gig as a project manager.
Adam Skelos's lawyer, Christopher Conniff, acknowledged it was "a good deed that quickly turned into nightmare" for Bonomo.
Adam's supervisor, Christopher Curcio, said that on Adam's first day of work on Jan. 2, 2013, the surly scion introduced himself by saying, "You know who I am. I'm Adam Skelos." He also announced he was only working two days a week — and he didn't even do that.
Curcio's logbook showed Adam would sometimes show up around noon before heading out to lunch and never returning. On another occasion, he showed up for five minutes and left.
When Curcio insisted he had to come in to the office, Adam called his dad, who called Bonomo to complain that the supervisor had been "picking on him." When Bonomo told the senator his son hadn't been bothering to show up to work, the unfazed Skelos told him "to work it out."
Bonomo said he felt that meant he couldn't take any action against Adam for treating his work like a no-show job. "I didn't want to have a problem in Albany," he testified.
Adam kept not coming in, and in April former U.S. Sen. Al D'Amato — a PRI lobbyist and decades-long Republican power broker — went to talk to Skelos about the issue.
He said he told Skelos his son was "not showing up at work" and was "disruptive" when he did, and that he could wind up getting fired.
Skelos told D'Amato his son "really needed the job" — but didn't say he'd do anything about his loafing.
The problem came to a head two months later, when Curcio again told Adam he had to actually come to work.
"Talk to me like that again and I'm going to smash your f---ing head in," Curcio quoted the ornery offspring as saying. "Guys like you aren't fit to shine my shoes."
The outburst led to Adam being demoted to a "consultant" two months later — after Bonomo got his dad's blessing to make the move.
In their closing arguments, lawyers for the father and son maintained "no crime was committed" — Dean Skelos had just tried to help his son the way any father would, and hadn't crossed any legal lines.
Prosecutor Jason Masimore disagreed, telling jurors in his closing argument that Skelos had used his power to intimidate companies "he could make or break" into lining his son's pockets. Adam Skelos pocketed over $300,000 from the various schemes.
"If the senator couldn't manage his complicated, able bodied adult son that's fine," Masimore said. "Just don't take that drama to Albany and corrupt the top levels of state government with it."
Senate Democratic Leader Andrea Stewart-Cousins said this latest conviction offered even more proof of the dire need for ethics reform.
"We need to implement a full-time Legislature and restrict legislators' outside income; we need to close the LLC loophole; we need to prohibit taxpayer reimbursement of campaign and legal defense funds and strip pensions from public officials convicted of corruption," she said in a statement."
Are Mangan & Coumo next?