Dean Skelos sentenced to 5 years

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Former State Senate Majority Leader Dean Skelos, who was convicted of federal corruption charges in December, was sentenced to five years in prison on Thursday, May 12. He was also fined $500,000.

His son, Adam, was sentenced to 6 and a half years in prison.

The Skeloses must share a $334,120 forfeiture, restitution for the money earned through their schemes.

Skelos, 68, and his son, 33, both of Rockville Centre, were accused of using the elder Skelos’s position as Senate majority leader to steer money and jobs to Adam. They were both convicted of three counts of extortion under color of official right, two counts of soliciting bribes in connection with a federal program and one count of conspiracy to commit honest services fraud.

Skelos’s scheme started immediately after he was named majority leader in 2011. He secured a job for his son at Physicians’ Reciprocal Insurers in Roslyn, but Adam rarely showed up for work, and was accused of being disruptive when he did. In testimony, his supervisor said that Adam threatened him when he tried to get the younger Skelos to actually do his job.

Later, prosecutors said, Glenwood Management made a payment of $20,000 to Adam, though there was no work done on his behalf for the company. Witnesses for both businesses said that Dean Skelos pressured them to make sure Adam got paid.

The third company Adam worked for was the Arizona-based AbTech, which won a $12 million contract with Nassau County for floodwater mitigation technology while Adam was an employee. According to prosecutors, Dean Skelos pressured county officials to get the work done more quickly so that money could start flowing to AbTech and, by extension, to Adam.

In all, the prosecution charged, Dean Skelos used his influence to obtain more than $200,000 for his son.

Lawyers for the Skeloses filed paperwork last month asking U.S. District Court Judge Kimba Wood for leniency, claiming that the elder Skelos’s decades of public service showed that he was a decent person, and that both men needed to stay out of prison to help Adam’s two sons, who are autistic. They asked for sentences of community service instead of jail time.

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