Anonymous fund created to help Skelos

A recently created website has begun to anonymously solicit donations to cover the legal expenses of State Sen. Dean Skelos and his son, Adam.

The website, www.skelosfamilylegaldefensefund.com, whose host or hosts are not identified, is asking visitors to donate to help cover the legal costs of Dean and Adam Skelos, who were indicted on corruption charges in May.

“The purpose of this Fund is to assist in providing the financial resources required to mount an effective legal defense for Dean and Adam Skelos in recognition that a central strategy of the prosecution is to place the Skelos family in severe financial hardship and thereby put them at a strategic disadvantage in the courtroom,” the website reads.

Every website is registered to those who create it, but the Skelos Family Legal Defense Fund is registered to Domains by Proxy LLC, which protects its customers’ identities.

The site itself offers virtually no information about who is running it. There is no contact info. The “Contact Us” page has a form that users can fill out, and lists an address — a Rockville Centre post office box — to which donations can be mailed. The site says simply that it was created by “friends of the Skelos Family.”

Sources said that Charles Shields, an accountant based in Freeport, was involved with the group. Shields did not return calls for comment.

Skelos, 67, and his son, Adam, 32, were arrested on May 4 and indicted three weeks later on corruption charges. According to U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara, Skelos used his influence as Senate majority leader to secure jobs and $200,000 in payments for his son.

Over the course of several years, Bharara alleges, Adam Skelos received more than $200,000 from real estate developer Glenwood Management and an environmental technology company, the Arizona-based AbTech, in exchange for his father’s help in getting legislation passed in Albany and contracts approved in Nassau County.

Skelos has not used campaign funds on his legal defense, and instead is apparently paying for it on his own. Robert Gage, his attorney, could not be reached for comment. Skelos also couldn’t be reached for comment.

The website proclaims Skelos’s innocence and says that he was targeted by the U.S. attorney, without mentioning Bharara’s name. “The Skelos Family Legal Defense Fund was formed to help Dean and his family stand up and defeat those who place their own ambition ahead of justice,” the site reads. “It was formed to make it clear that it’s wrong to criminalize the relationship between a father and son. Finally, it was formed to protect Dean and his family from the morally-egregious prosecutorial strategy of seeking satisfaction from the financial ruin of a defendant in the absence of a conviction.”