I wrote this morning about the mixed reaction U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara is getting from his new plan to strip crooked lawmakers of their pensions through a forfeiture action, which included a healthy dose of skepticism from many lawyers who wondered how it would jibe with pension protections in the State Constitution.

Gov. Andrew Cuomo was certainly thwarted by them as he negotiated with a 2011 ethics overhaul, he said yesterday.

“We tried to do exactly this,” Cuomo told reporters at an event in Staten Island, according to a report by NY1′s Zack Fink. “We wanted to take the pensions of members who were convicted of felonies. It was not constitutional to take their pension as their pension, because that was a right that was already vested.”

Cuomo aides stressed the governor was not contradicting Bharara, who the governor said was talking about “something different.”

In 2011, the law was changed to allow civil suits — similar to what Bharara is proposing — against convicted public officials to recoup their pensions. But it only applied for people entering the pension system going forward: lawmakers like Assemblyman Eric Stevenson, D-Bronx, and Sen. Malcolm Smith, D-Queens, would be exempted.

Bharara, however, said he’s going after their retirement payments. Stay tuned.

Igor Belyansky pled guilty on Monday in U.S. District Court in Manhattan to conspiring to bribe New York State Assemblyman Eric Stevenson.
The conspiracy was part of a scheme to obtain Stevenson’s assistance in drafting, proposing, and agreeing to enact legislation favorable to Belyansky’s business, according to Preet Bharara, U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York.
He said Belyansky, who sought to open an adult day care center in the Bronx, also pled guilty to conspiring to bribe former New York State Assembly member Nelson Castro.
Belyansky was arrested in April. He could get 30 to 37 months in prison for the crimes plus a fine of $6,000 to $60,000.

As we reported yesterday, state prosecutors have charged William Rapfogel with inflating insurance contracts to the organization he once headed — the Metropolitan Council on Jewish Poverty — and arranged for some of the extra money to be donated by the insurer to various political candidates.

Democratic Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver, who employs Rapfogel’s wife Judy as his chief of staff, got just under $5,000 from the insurer, Century Coverage Corporation, and its executives. Sen. Marty Golden, R-Brooklyn, got $12,000 and former Assemblyman Vito Lopez, D-Brooklyn, got $5,500. Others, including New York City politicians, are detailed in the below chart.

The Met Council, as its called, currently holds nearly $80 million in state contracts. (See sheet 3 of that spreadsheet.) And there’s at least another $1 million in member items, including $120,000 from Golden and $300,000 marked by former Sen. Carl Kruger, D-Brooklyn, who pleaded guilty to federal corruption charges.

I say “at least” because the Assembly doesn’t detail their member items as proactively as the state Senate. This is just what a quick online search will get you. Silver, D-Manhattan, has also marked money for the organization over the years, and even grew testy a few years ago when a reporter asked him about his largesse. He described the Met Council’s anti-poverty programs.

Here’s the spreadsheet:

The head of the Homeowners Association in Brooklyn used about $20,000 in member item funds for personal use, including paying for laptops used by her family, according to Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli’s office.

The comptroller’s investigators discovered that the contractor helped herself to state-funded equipment, including an iPad used by her granddaughter and a laptop that was supposed to be used to keep records of the non-profit but only contained homework assignments, iTunes and the personal resume of the Homeowners Association’s president’s husband.

Homeowners’ president, Carolyn Faulkner, received the grant through a state legislative member item to purchase equipment for workshops, seminars, meetings and newsletters on home ownership, credit worthiness and foreclosure preventions for residents of East New York, Brownsville and Canarsie in Brooklyn. Instead, DiNapoli’s auditors found, from 2010 to 2011, Faulkner spent all of the $20,000 on equipment that was used primarily for her family’s personal activities.

Faulker’s husband, Melvin Faulkner, works for Assemblywoman Inez Barron, assisting residents facing foreclosure. Documentation sought by DiNapoli’s team about use of the grant money for things such as copiers and fax machines was provided from a copying machine in Barron’s office, the audit says. Records show Melvin Faulkner is paid $39,042 by the Assembly as a community liaison.

The audit said the grant, administered by the state Office of Children and Family Services, was supposed to be used to train Brooklyn residents on ways to improve their financial situation.

The comptroller sent the findings to the state Attorney General’s Civil Recoveries Bureau. He recommended that OCFS work with the Attorney General to make a full recovery of the $20,000.

“This vendor was supposed to help individuals achieve the American dream of homeownership. Instead, she fulfilled her own dreams and allowed her family to use state-funded equipment for homework assignments, iTunes downloads and other personal business,” DiNapoli said. “OCFS needs to ensure that the public’s money is used appropriately. State agencies which administer grants must be held accountable for taxpayer money.”

Barron, a Democrat who has been highly critical of Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver, won election in November to the city council in New York City, filling the seat of her husband, Charles Barron. Capitol officials have speculated that Charles Barron may run for her Assembly seat.

The member item came from Sen. John Sampson, D-Brooklyn.

In today’s Gannett newspapers, we look at Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s anti-corruption commission and its harsh criticism of the state Board of Elections.

The Moreland Commission’s findings, as it turns out, sound a familiar tune.

From the Democrat and Chronicle:

In a long-awaited report, Governor Cuomo’s anti-corruption panel made a series of sweeping recommendations to stem the tide of misconduct in Albany, including an overhaul of the state’s lax election laws and who enforces them.

The year was 1990. The governor was Mario Cuomo. And not much has changed.

The state Board of Elections, the report concluded at the time, ...

U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York Preet Bharara filed applications on Tuesday for orders that would require four public officials, including ex-Sen. Hiram Monserrate, to forfeit their pension benefits.

Bharara also asks a court for the right to serve discovery requests seeking to locate benefits paid to these former New York City Council and Yonkers City Council officials convicted of corruption offenses.

“We aim to prevent corrupt elected officials from continuing to benefit from pensions paid for by the very people they betrayed in office,” Bharara said. “We are committed to using every legal tool to take the profit out of crime, and that includes preventing public money from being used to fund the comfortable retirement of corrupt officials.”

He seeks to strip benefits from former New York City Council members Miguel Martinez, Larry Seabrook, and Monserrate, and former Yonkers City Council member Sandy Annabi, all of whom were sentenced to prison between 2009 and 2012.

And all of them were required to forfeit funds to the government as part of their sentences, yet they have not turned over any money. The pensions Bharara is seeking to block in this case would come from the New York City Employee Retirement System.

Introduced in May, a bill to strip pensions from felonious lawmakers or public officials has not gathered much steam, but is live for next year as well. The idea is being embraced by the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District, who is pushing the notion of forfeiting pensions before sentencing judges, as indicated in Monday’s Times Union story.

The measure, submitted by Assemblyman David Buchwald, a freshman Democrat from White Plains, has found 40 co-sponsors but has not yet been taken up in the Governmental Operations Committee on which he sits. The measure would have to be passed by two separately elected legislatures and put before voters as it requires a constitutional amendment.

Taken up by Sen. Neil Breslin, D-Albany County, in the upper house, it would impact employees covered by public pension systems.

Here’s the text:

A.7173

Every freshmen member of the Assembly — including six Capital Region lawmakers from both parties — has signed on to a bill that would strip public officials convicted of felony corruption of their pensions, the bill’s sponsor said Wednesday.

The broadening support for the bill among those who traditionally have the least amount of influence in the Legislature, while symbolic, is far from a guarantee that it will ever become law.

But the renewed push for the measure comes as yet another one of their own, Brooklyn Assemblyman William Boyland Jr., awaits a verdict in his federal corruption trial.

Dueling Senate versions of the legislation — one sponsored by Bethlehem Democrat Neil Breslin — leave its future uncertain. A similar measure was among a package of ethics reforms backed by the minority Senate Democrats that stalled in the chamber last year.

“It’s not the deterrent. It’s about the message you want to send about what we expect of our elected officials and expect of ourselves,” said Queensbury Republican Dan Stec. “When people feel like they’re wronged, they want some justice.”

Stec, among the freshman contingent supporting the bill, authored similar legislation that he said was bottled up in committee by Assembly Democrats last year.

Broadly, the bill would clear the way for voters to amend the state constitution to block “any state or local officer” from collecting a public pension if he or she is convicted of “a felony involving a breach of the public trust.”

That would apply to a wide range of both elected and non-elected officials state and local officials. The proposed change requires an amendment because public pensions are constitutionally protected. As a result, the bill would need to pass two consecutive Legislatures before heading to the statewide ballot.

In 2011 Legislature passed a far more limited version of pension forfeiture that applied only to public officials who weren’t already in the state pension system — that is to say no sitting state lawmakers.

A competing Senate bill, sponsored by Long Island Republican Carl Marcellino, would apply only to elected officials and only to pension credits they amassed while in that elected office, not any benefit they had accrued before then.

That bill is co-sponsored by Halfmoon Republican Kathy Marchione as well as several members of the Independent Democratic Conference, which shares power with the GOP in the upper chamber.

Assemblyman David Buchwald, the lead sponsor of the Assembly bill, said the core message is not the details of the competing bills but rather that there is broad agreement across party lines that lawmakers convicted of felonies shouldn’t continue to profit from the offices they betrayed while behind bars.

Breslin said he would be open to compromise and has no question that if the constitutional amendment ever did reach the ballot, voters would overwhelmingly embrace it.

“I think it would pass by much greater margin that it would pass in either house” of the legislature, Breslin said.

Assemblyman William F. Boyland Jr. was convicted of multiple federal corruption charges on Thursday covering bribery, submitting false travel vouchers and stealing public funds meant for elderly New Yorkers.

The federal jury in Brooklyn found Boyland, the son of former Assemblyman William “Frank” Boyland Sr. also from Brooklyn, was found guilty on 21 felony counts including extortion, honest services wire fraud and conspiracy to commit mail fraud.
He used his public position in the commission of the crimes and was automatically expelled from the Assembly.

He faces up to 20 years on each of the extortion, extortion conspiracy, honest services wire fraud, honest services wire fraud conspiracy and mail fraud conspiracy counts, up to 10 years on each of the federal programs bribery and federal programs theft counts and up to five years on each of the other conspiracy counts. Boyland is subject to up to at least $250,000 in fines on each of the counts of conviction, as well as criminal forfeiture and mandatory restitution. Sentencing is scheduled for June 30.

Loretta E. Lynch, the U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of New York, and George Venizelos, the assistant director-in-charge at the Federal Bureau of Investigation handled the case.

“The breadth and pervasiveness of the corruption exposed by this prosecution is staggering,” Lynch said. “Wherever there was an opportunity for William Boyland to corruptly line his own pockets, he took it.”

Evidence at trial showed that Boyland’s schemes ran from January 2007 to December 2011 and included soliciting and accepting over $250,000 in bribe payments and submitting false travel vouchers to New York state.

Boyland’s exit leaves Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver with 99 members in the Democratic conference of the 150-seat Assembly.

Attorney General Eric Schneiderman and Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli won restitution from two former Troy Housing Authority employees who pled guilty to defrauding the New York State Retirement System, the officials said Monday.

The officials, William Meissner and Roger Rosenthal, are paying back the pension system more than $63,000.

Rosenthal retired from the Troy Housing Authority in 2005 and began collecting a full pension then went back to working as a supposed ‘consultant’ with the authority, collecting more than $200,000 in a three-year period in addition to the pension.

When the validity of Rosenthal’s ‘consulting’ arrangement with the Housing Authority was questioned, Rosenthal and Meissner submitted a falsified, backdated contract in an effort to cover the illegal retirement payments, the comptroller’s and AG’s offices said.

As part of today’s plea agreement, Meissner and Rosenthal have paid New York State Retirement System $63,517.41 in restitution.

The case stems from a report produced jointly by the State Comptroller’s office and the U.S. Housing and Urban Development – Office of Inspector General and is a product of the Joint Task Force on Public Integrity, a cooperative effort between the office.

“These men abused the public trust, defrauded the New York State Retirement System, and harmed both taxpayers and retirees,” said Schneiderman.

Assemblyman Bill Scarborough. (screengrab: assembly.state.ny.us)

Federal agents today raided the Albany and city offices of Queens Democratic Assemblyman Bill Scarborough, the FBI confirmed this afternoon.

“The FBI conducted searches today of the Albany and New York City Offices of New York State Assemblyman William Scarborough,” FBI Albany spokesman Paul Holstein said in a statement. “At this time, no further information is being released.”

A spokeswoman for the bureau’s city office said the search was conducted as part of “an ongoing FBI investigation,” but declined to discuss whether any items were removed, what specifically agents were looking for, or the nature ...

U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara. (Photo: Getty)

Gov. Andrew Cuomo recently disbanded a commission convened to fight public corruption, angering one U.S. Attorney on a crusade to root out law-breaking pols in New York.

After criticizing Mr. Cuomo in today’s New York Times for ending the Moreland Commission, U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara reaffirmed his dissatisfaction with Mr. Cuomo’s decision on The Brian Lehrer Show today.

“We pursue things aggressively and quickly but things don’t happen overnight,” Mr. Bharara said. “Rome wasn’t built in a day and a commission can’t show great success when it was intended to be in existence for ...

Councilman Ruben Wills’ mugshot.

Queens Councilman Ruben Wills pleaded not guilty this morning in Queens criminal court to a slew of corruption charges in connection with allegations that he used a sham company to funnel more than $30,000 in government grants and public campaign matching funds into the coffers of his own nonprofit, ...

Attorney General Eric Schneiderman. (Photo: Andrew Burton/Getty)

Attorney General Eric Schneiderman, formally announcing corruption charges against Councilman Ruben Wills, today tore into the now-embattled Queens pol.

“The crimes Mr. Wills is accused of committing represent a shameful breach of the trust his constituents placed in him,” said Mr. Schneiderman in ...

Dan Halloran announcing a failed congressional campaign last year.

A jury found former City Councilman Dan Halloran guilty on all counts against him in connection with two separate political corruption schemes — including one to rig the mayoral race, U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara announced Tuesday.

“With today’s verdict of guilty ...

Editor’s note: Forty years ago, on Aug. 8, 1974, Richard M. Nixon became the only president of the United States to resign. Historians cite the relentless coverage of the Watergate scandal by The Washington Post as the catalyst for that event. Harry Rosenfeld, now editor-at-large of the Times Union, was at that time overseeing Watergate coverage as assistant managing editor of the Post.

In those days — was that really more than four decades ago? — I was immersed in the unfolding Watergate investigation. While the tide of serial incrimination rose, eventually sinking the presidency of Richard Nixon, any idea that he could be forced to resign or be impeached was far from my mind.

As the editor in charge of the daily investigative coverage of that scandal, increasingly revealed by Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, reporters on the local news staff, it was an uppermost concern of mine not to massage the message. Our newspaper, The Washington Post, led in discovering the breadth and depth of the wrongdoings of Watergate. From the first, the White House counterattacked, deriding our extensive coverage of the Watergate break-in as overkill involving nothing more than “a third-rate burglary.”

That was only the opening salvo of a relentless attack from the Republicans in the White House, the Congress and the party organization and its well-connected faithful. We were denounced as a notoriously liberal newspaper, beholden to the Democrats and enlisted as their partisan attack dog. Moreover, the whole world — at least the insiders that resided in the District of Columbia and environs — knew that our charismatic executive editor, Ben Bradlee, had been a very close friend, a veritable buddy, of President John Kennedy, who beat Nixon for the job the first time he ran in 1960.

Read Rosenfeld’s full story HERE.

The U.S. Attorney in Manhattan was able to get a former city council member to lose out on some of his pension money and the same prosecutor is asking a judge to freeze out a former Assembly member from enjoying pension dollars he socked away before his conviction on corruption charges.

Preet Bharara on Thursday said Miguel Martinez, who served on the New York City council, is forfeiting his benefits to satisfy a forfeiture order against him.

At the same time, Bharara said he has filed an order for pension contributions to be forfeited by Eric Stevenson, formerly one of the Democratic majority in the Assembly Both elected officials were convicted of corruption offenses.

The actions, Bharara said, are “a substantial step towards preventing corrupt elected officials from benefiting from pensions paid for by the people they betrayed in office.

“This office is committed to using every available legal means to prevent taxpayers’ money from being used to pay for the comfortable retirement of officials who betray those taxpayers while in office.”

Martinez was sentenced to five years in prison and ordered to forfeit $106,000. Martinez agreed to forfeit his right to pension benefits until the judgment is fully paid.

Stevenson, convicted in January, was ordered to forfeit $22,000, but has not paid the sum. Stevenson is not a vested member in the New York State & Local Employee Retirement System but is entitled to a refund of the contributions he made into the system. Bharara wants to take that money to apply toward the judgment and is applying to Chief Judge Loretta A. Preska to get those contributions.

The day after Sen. John Sampson survived a Democratic primary battle, his political consultant, Melvin Lowe, was found guilty by a federal jury of conspiring with Sampson to defraud the Democratic Senate Campaign Committee.

U.S. Attorney for the Southern District Preet Bharara added to his string of convictions within New York’s political environment. His case against Lowe prevailed in federal court in White Plains where Lowe was found guilty of working with Sampson to relieve the campaign committee of $100,000.

Lowe, a one time aide to Sampson, was also found guilty of one count of wire fraud arising out of his scheme to defraud the DSCC; three counts of subscribing to false tax returns; three counts of failing to file tax returns; and one count of causing a bank employee to make a false report of a federally insured bank.

The convictions came after a one-week trial before U.S. District Judge Vincent L. Briccetti.

“This conviction is another step in restoring the public’s trust in New York State politics,” Bharara said. “As the jury found, Lowe participated in a series of backroom deals in which the bridge of corruption extended between the world of elected officials and their complicit consultants. Consultants, like elected officials, need to be held accountable in order to clean up our political system.”

Prosecutors said Lowe was retained as a consultant by the DSCC after Sampson was appointed as the Senate’s Democratic Conference Leader following the June 2009 coup that temporarily shifted the balance of power in the New York Senate from the Democrats to the Republicans.

In early June 2010, prosecutors said, Sampson asked Lowe to arrange for a covert payment of $20,000 to Michael Nieves, a Queens-based political operative who had previously worked for former Democratic Sen. Hiram Monserrate and who had helped engineer the resolution of the Senate coup that had brought Sampson to power.

Lowe arranged for a New Jersey-based political consultant to submit a false invoice to the DSCC for $100,000 in printing services, prosecutors said. Sampson approved payment of the invoice and the DSCC sent $100,000 to the New Jersey-based consultant. Lowe instructed the consultant to send $20,000 of the proceeds to Nieves, $75,000 of the proceeds to Lowe’s consulting company and to keep $5,000 for himself. The jury heard evidence that Lowe and Sampson had a close relationship of trust that included Lowe giving Sampson an envelope of cash.

Lowe, prosecutors said, received more than $2.1 million in consulting income from 2007 to 2012. He reported less than $25,000 in income in each of his returns for 2007 through 2009, which he did not file until late 2010. Lowe did not file returns for 2010 through 2012. He never made any payments toward his taxes for the years 2000 through 2012.

Sampson, of Brooklyn, is also under federal indictment.

Westchester County Executive Rob Astorino, Republican candidate for governor, spoke in front of the federal courthouse in White Plains this morning to announce a new campaign ad that accuses Democratic Gov. Andrew Cuomo of corruption in connection with the Moreland Commission on Public Corruption. The governor, who created the panel, disbanded it in the spring, after state lawmakers agreed to strengthen anti-bribery legislation and support more independent enforcement of state election laws.

“Governor Cuomo is under a cloud of corruption in the state and yet, when asked, he says he’s not going to talk about it and apparently there’s no ...

Brian McLaughlin, a one-time Queens Democratic political power and labor leader, was released from a federal prison camp after serving a little more than half of his 10-year sentence.

McLaughlin was released Oct. 10, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District. He was sentenced in July 2009 to 10 years in federal prison. His reduced term came about because of his cooperation in federal probes and good conduct while in prison, according to his lawyer, Michael Armstrong.

McLaughlin served in the Assembly from 1993 to 2006 when he was accused of 44 felonies. He pleaded guilty to stealing millions of dollars from his union organization, his campaign account and from the state. He wore a listening device for the federal government after his arrest and has been credited in helping the Justice Department in investigations that resulted in convictions of former Sen. Carl Kruger of Brooklyn and former Assemblyman Anthony Seminario of Queens. Kruger ended up with a seven-year sentence and Seminario, who died in prison, received a six-year sentence.

McLaughlin was head of the Central Labor Council while serving in the Assembly.