Former Legislator Roger Corbin sentenced to 18 months in federal prison

    Former Nassau County Legislator Roger Corbin, who pleaded guilty to tax evasion charges in January, was sentenced on Monday in U.S. District Court in Central Islip to 18 months in federal prison.
    The 63-year-old former Democratic lawmaker, who was ousted last year from the 2nd Legislative District seat he had held since the Legislature’s 1995 inception, was also given three years of supervised release and ordered to pay $92,170 in back taxes and penalties.
    Corbin, who represented parts of Lakeview and West Hempstead, had pleaded guilty to a seven-count federal indictment, which included charges of tax evasion, filing false federal tax returns for three years and making false statements to federal officers.
    Federal investigators determined that, between February 2005 and January 2008, the Westbury resident had deposited 82 checks, totaling $229,000, from a developer working on projects in the Westbury-New Cassel area of Corbin’s district, into four personal bank accounts, and did not report the money on his federal income tax returns.
    When federal agents questioned Corbin at his home on Nov. 20, 2008 about the tax evasion, he lied, claiming to have given the money to someone who was paying workers at the developer’s New Cassel construction sites. The individual Corbin named had died in 2005. Corbin later admitted making false statements.

    At his sentencing, Corbin, who began his career in public service in the late 1980s after seeing a need for more minority elected officials in county government, reportedly told U.S. District Court Judge Sandra Feuerstein, “I never did anything [previously] against the law. ... I apologize to my family, my friends and to my country.”
    Had Corbin gone to trial and been convicted on all counts, he could have faced up to 11 years in prison.
    Corbin, a longtime civil rights activist, lost the September 2009 Democratic primary by a wide margin to former Town of North Hempstead Councilman Robert Troiano.
    Among his accomplishments as the 2nd L.D. representative, Corbin helped secure $5 million to renovate Lakeview’s Tanglewood Preserve in 2006, which led to the establishment of the Center for Science Teaching and Learning. The following year, he provided funding to Malverne High School for a new track, and in 2008, he completed a 12-year effort to rename Woodfield Road, between Lakeview and Eagle avenues in West Hempstead, in honor of Lakeview resident Derrick Adkins, who won an Olympic gold medal in 1996.

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