John Sampson, Crooked Brooklyn Senator, Sentenced To 5 Years In The Slammer

EAST NEW YORK, BROOKLYN — Yet another New York state politician was sent to prison Wednesday on charges of corruption while in office — the third in under a year. This time, the perp was John Sampson, 51, a former New York State Senator representing the 19th district, which covers the East New York/Brownsville/Canarsie area of Brooklyn.

His sentence? Five years — same as that of the infamous Dean Skelos, former Republican leader of the State Senate, but less than half than that of Sheldon Silver, the even more infamous former Assembly speaker from the Lower East Side. Both the others were sentenced last spring.

Sampson, for his part, was found guilty of trying to pull strings behind the scenes of a federal court case against Queens businessman Edul Ahmad — an effort to cover the senator's own embezzlement scheme using Ahmad's money, according to the U.S. Department of Justice.

"Corrupt activity on behalf of our elected officials leaves the public feeling betrayed," William Sweeney, Jr., a higher-up at the FBI's New York office, said Wednesday. "Those responsible for upholding the law shouldn’t be the ones breaking it."

"Although this chapter ends today, the FBI will continue the very important work of investigating public corruption in all its many forms,” Sweeney said.

Sampson represented the East New York area in Albany for nearly two decades: From 1997 until his conviction in the summer of 2015.

Here's what he did while in office, according to federal prosecutors:

Sampson obstructed justice by using a personal friend who was a supervisory paralegal at the U.S. Attorney’s Office in an attempt to obtain confidential law enforcement information. Specifically, Sampson requested the identity of cooperating witnesses and their statements to the government to improperly help a Queens businessman, Edul Ahmad, fight a mortgage fraud case brought by the Office against Ahmad. Sampson’s motive was to prevent the possibility of Ahmad cooperating with the government and disclosing that Sampson borrowed $188,500 from Ahmad to replenish escrow accounts from which Sampson, an attorney, had embezzled hundreds of thousands of dollars to fund his unsuccessful 2005 campaign for Kings County District Attorney. Sampson never repaid the loan to Ahmad, failed to report it on his Senate financial disclosure forms as required by law, and used his Senate office in various ways to help Ahmad. At the time of his indictment, Sampson had failed to repay over $160,000 of the embezzled funds. At present, over $80,000 of the embezzled funds remains unpaid.

“At the root of all this is some idea you picked up along the way that you had the right to dispense with your ethical obligations,” a federal judge reportedly told Sampson at his sentencing. “It’s disturbing. We have a pattern here.”

To which the disgraced senator reportedly replied: “No one can understand the suffering I’ve experienced."

Lead photo courtesy of the New York State Senate