NY GOP Senate Leader and Son Arrested on Federal Corruption Charges
Corruption is running rampant in New York City after the state Senate Majority Leader Dean Skelos and his son, Adam Skelos, were arrested on Monday committing fraud, extortion and accepting bribes. The charges carry a potential sentence of over 80 years in prison.
New York State Senate Majority Leader Dean Skelos and his son, Adam Skelos, were arrested on Monday on federal corruption charges. Accused of committing fraud, extortion, and accepting bribes, Skelos allegedly abused his official position to solicit nearly $220,000 in payments to his son. After NY Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver was arrested in January for accepting roughly $4 million in bribes and kickbacks, Adam purchased a burner phone and naively shared the number with a confidential informant working with the FBI.
On December 20, 2010, Dean Skelos met with a senior executive, a lobbyist, and the founder of Glenwood Management, a real estate development firm. According to the complaint against him, Skelos directly asked them to send Glenwoods title insurance commissions and other business to his son in exchange for negotiating upcoming legislation renewals. Unbeknownst to Skelos, the senior executive at the meeting would end up cooperating with the FBI and secretly recording their conversations.
After several meetings with Skelos, the FBI informant at Glenwood caused a $20,000 check to be issued to Adam from a title insurance company dependent on Glenwood for business even though Adam did no work for them whatsoever. The informant also arranged for an environmental company named AbTech Industries to hire Adam in 2011 as a consultant and pay him $4,000 each month for his fathers political influence. With financial investments in AbTech, the informant and Glenwoods founding family had substantial influence in hiring Adam at AbTech. In a conversation recorded in February 2015 by a senior AbTech executive who recently began cooperating with the FBI, Adam admitted that he became a consultant for the company even though he literally knew nothing about water or, you know, any of that stuff.
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http://www.nationofchange.org/2015/05/05/ny-senate-leader-and-son-arrested-on-federal-corruption-charges/