Sheldon Silver Gets 7 Years In Prison For Corruption, Feds Say

NEW YORK, NY — A Manhattan federal judge on Friday sentenced former state Assembly speaker to seven years in prison following his second conviction on corruption charges, the Manhattan U.S. Attorney's Office said. The disgraced onetime lawmaker from the Lower East Side will also be subject to three years of supervised release after a jury found him guilty in May of charges including honest services wire fraud and extortion.

"We hope today’s fittingly stiff sentence sends a clear message: brokering official favors for your personal benefit is illegal and will result in prison time," Manhattan U.S. Attorney Geoffrey Berman said in a statement.

Silver's 2015 arrest and expulsion from office after his first conviction marked the downfall of one of New York's most powerful lawmakers. The Democrat served as the Assembly's leader for more than two decades, holding immense influence in the state government.

The sentence U.S. District Judge Valerie Caproni imposed Friday was significantly lighter than the 12-year prison term she ordered for Silver after his first conviction.

Asked for comment, Silver, 74, reportedly said, "I have nothing to say at this point. Nothing at all to say. Nothing."

His attorney did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Prosecutors accused Silver of running lucrative kickback schemes in which he got millions of dollars in fees from law firms and of taking several steps to cover up his crimes.

In one scheme, according to prosecutors, Silver asked real estate developers that lobbied him — Glenwood Management Corp. and The Witkoff Group, LLC — to hire the law firm Goldberg & Iryami for legal services, which they did.

Silver got a cut of the real estate firms' legal fees that added up to nearly $700,000 and took official actions that benefitted the companies, including the approval of more than $1 billion in state financing for Glenwood, prosecutors said.

Silver also had a "corrupt arrangement" with Dr. Robert Taub, a physician specializing in asbestos-related diseases, prosecutors said.

Taub referred his patients to Weitz & Luxenberg, the law firm where Silver purportedly worked, while Silver steered hundreds of thousands of dollars in state funds to the doctor's research center, according to prosecutors. The scheme got Silver more than $3 million from legal fees from Taub's referred patients despite doing no work on those asbestos cases, prosecutors said.

Silver also scored an additional $1 million by laundering his dirty money through "private investment vehicles," prosecutors said.

Silver was first convicted of corruption in 2015 but an appeals court overturned the conviction last year following the Supreme Court's 2016 ruling in the case of former Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell, which narrowed the definition of corruption.

Silver's sentencing came about a week after former state Senate Majority Leader Dean Skelos was convicted of corruption in a retrial alongside his son, Adam Skelos.

(Lead image: Sheldon Silver leaves federal court in Manhattan in 2016. Photo by Eduardo Munoz Alvarez/Getty Images)