Ex-Pa. senator convicted of 137 corruption counts

PHILADELPHIA  – Vincent Fumo, once one of the most powerful figures in Pennsylvania politics, was convicted Monday of more than 130 counts of corruption for schemes that defrauded the state Senate and others of more than $3.5 million and allowed him to live a lavish lifestyle.
The 65-year-old former state senator was found guilty of all 137 counts against him, which also included obstruction of justice for destroying e-mail evidence. The jury deliberated about the Philadelphia Democrat’s fate for about six days after a five-month trial.

NEWARK, N.J. – The mayors of two New Jersey cities and a state legislator were arrested Thursday in connection with a major corruption and international money-laundering conspiracy probe. Some of the suspects were also allegedly involved in an illegal human organ-selling ring. Among the approximately 30 people arrested were Hoboken Mayor Peter Cammarano, who took office 23 days ago, Secaucus Mayor Dennis Elwell, state Assemblyman Daniel Van Pelt and Jersey City Deputy Mayor Leona Beldini, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Newark.

An FBI spokesman told NBC affiliate WNBC that the investigation involved a “high-volume international money-laundering conspiracy.” WNBC reported that some of the suspects also were accused of accepting cash payments that were taken to help find organs for sick patients in need of transplants. It was unclear where the body parts might have come from or how many surgeries may have been done. Several rabbis in New York and New Jersey were also taken into custody, federal prosecutors said. Cars were backed up four deep with suspects outside the FBI’s Newark office.

FBI and IRS agents were making the roundups in what is being described as one of the biggest investigations of its kind in state history, according to WNBC. The probe is said to have been launched when money transfers drew the interests of federal investigators. The Newark-based Star-Ledger newspaper reported that federal investigators removed at least three boxes of evidence from a Jewish school. A synagogue in Deal, N.J., was also searched. Newark Mayor Cory Booker, who has fought corruption in New Jersey’ largest city, says it’s “an unbelievable morning so far.” A news conference is scheduled for noon at the U.S. attorney’s office in Newark.

In recent years, New Jersey has seen more than 130 corruption-related convictions of public officials. Earlier this month, prosecutors alleged that Assemblyman Joseph Vas, a former Perth Amboy mayor, engaged in a scheme with a political adviser to funnel money through people who were given funds to make contributions. Vas had previously been accused of using his political influence to further a real estate deal that netted him nearly $300,000.

April 16, 2009 — NY Post

YESTERDAY’S wide ranging indictment against former Liberal Party boss Raymond B. Harding paints a vivid portrait of ballot lines for sale in New York. The indictment alleges that, in exchange for numerous Liberal endorsements over the years, officials in the office of disgraced ex-Comptroller Alan Hevesi rewarded Harding with secret assignments on transactions in the state’s pension fund that garnered the ex-party boss hundreds of thousands of dollars in fees. The indictment is a reminder that New York’s unusual election law, which lets candidates run on multiple party lines, is an invitation to corruption and political patronage. With the growing disgust of business-as-usual in Albany, now is the time for reforms that would give New York a genuine third-party system — in which minor parties run their own candidates and compete in the marketplace of ideas for votes.

Minor parties are common in US politics, but few states afford them such an easy path to power as New York: In the Empire State a minor party can cross-endorse candidates who are also appearing on the Democratic and Republican lines. This third-party backing has become an object of intense desire among Republicans and Democrats, because it can cut down on competition and ensure that an independent candidate doesn’t siphon votes away from major-party candidates. New York law also gives minor parties incentives to cross-endorse popular candidates rather than run their own party members as contenders. For starters, a party that garners at least 50,000 votes in a gubernatorial election earns an automatic spot on the ballot for the next four years. And cross-endorsing also gives minor parties influence over the votes of Democratic or Republican office-holders whose views they normally couldn’t sway. All this electoral complexity leads to political horse-trading that gives third-parties disproportionate power without actually increasing choices for voters. In 1998, for instance, the new Working Families Party had only about 100 enrolled voters in the state. But the party endorsed Democratic gubernatorial candidate Peter Vallone, a fiscal conservative whose platform didn’t reflect the far-left WFP agenda. Vallone was desperate for a third-party line in his battle against George Pataki, who wielded both the Republican and Conservative lines; the WFP, a creature of the state’s unions, was desperate for votes. New York law allowed tens of thousands of voters, many of them union members who are enrolled Democrats, to vote for Vallone on the WFP line — giving the party a place on future ballots and hence enormous influence despite its paltry enrollments.

Harding was a master at using the power of the third-party cross-endorsement. He cross-endorsed Rudy Giuliani for mayor, thereby giving Giuliani an extra line where Democrats who wanted to vote for him could do so without pulling the Republican lever. In a city with only only about 33,000 voters enrolled as Liberals, Giuliani pulled nearly 62,000 votes on the Liberal line in his 1993 defeat of David Dinkins. With his party helping provide the margin of victory in a tight race, Harding became a powerful force in the Giuliani administration, where two of his sons and other Liberal officials gained appointments. But Harding worked with members of both major parties. He frequently cross-endorsed Alan Hevesi in the Queens Democrat’s campaigns for the state Assembly, for mayor and for state comptroller. It was in exchange for this longtime support, the indictment alleges, that officials in Hevesi’s office conspired to reward Harding by making him a party to transactions that they tried to conceal from public view. Harding, the indictment alleges, showed his gratitude and continued support by helping to find a private-sector job for then-Assemblyman Michael Cohen, clearing the way for Hevesi’s son Andrew to replace him in the Legislature.

As these examples suggest, the potential for abuse of this sort in such a system is so great that most states made the process of cross-endorsing an electoral relic in the 19th century. Only seven states still allow it, and nowhere is its practice as widespread and influential as here. New York needs to reform its election law to end the so-called “fusion politics” of cross-endorsing. This would ensure that third-parties offer voters a real choice — not just a duplication of names on other party lines. And it would force minor parties to engage in real organization building, rather than allowing groups with little membership to earn their way onto ballots on the coattails of major-party candidates, ala the Working Families Party in 1998. That practice awards too much power to narrow, special interest parties. Albany owes voters a reform that most states embraced more than a century ago.

Jacob Weisberg NEWSWEEK From the magazine issue dated Dec 22, 2008

Corruption in Illinois is mainly pedestrian and shameful. In Louisiana, it’s flamboyant and shameless. With the unmasking of Gov. Rod Blagojevich as a kleptocrat of Paraguayan proportion, Illinois now has a real chance—if the allegations prove true— to defeat Louisiana in the NCAA finals of American political corruption. The land of Lincoln boasts some impressive stats. Dick Simpson, a political scientist at the University of Illinois at Chicago, says more than 1,000 people have been convicted in political corruption cases since 1971, including an astonishing 30 aldermen. If Blagojevich goes to prison, he will be the fourth of the last eight governors to wear stripes, joining predecessors George Ryan (racketeering, conspiracy, obstruction), Dan Walker (bank fraud) and Otto Kerner (straight-up bribery). Should he be assigned to the U.S. penitentiary in Terre Haute, Ind., Blagojevich could become the first governor to share a cell with someone he defeated at the polls. But don’t count Louisiana out. According to the Corporate Crime Reporter, it was No. 1 for the period between 1997 and 2006 with 326 federal corruption convictions. That’s a rate of 7.67 per 100,000. Illinois had 524 convictions in the same period, but with a larger population, its rate was only 4.68, which puts it an embarrassing sixth. And Louisiana can boast some impressive streaks. In 2001 Jim Brown became the third consecutive insurance commissioner to be convicted. Rep. William Jefferson, who was just defeated for re-election following corruption charges, apparently liked cold, hard cash so much he kept bundles of it in his freezer. His brother, sister and niece recently joined him under indictment. (Jefferson, his brother and niece have pleaded not guilty; his sister has pleaded guilty.) Corruption in Illinois grows out of a tradition of patronage politics—not just the old Democratic machine in Chicago, but also a Republican machine in the suburbs. Even as old-school politics has faded, however, scandals in Illinois have retained their ward-boss flavor. They still tend to revolve around petty, methodical rake-offs from the quotidian operations of government: liquor licenses, elevator inspections, speeding tickets and, above all, hiring. The paradigmatic Illinois crook was Paul Powell, who served as secretary of state in the 1960s. When Powell died, his executor found shoeboxes filled with $800,000 in cash (along with 49 cases of whisky and two of creamed corn) in the Springfield hotel room where he lived. The money had been collected in $5 and $10 increments from applicants who wanted to make sure they passed their driving tests. Under the old Richard J. Daley machine, city workers had to kick back about 5 percent of their salaries to the political organization that guaranteed their jobs. When, on a tapped phone line, he allegedly insisted that “you don’t just give it away for nothing,” Blagojevich was applying an old precept—though possibly for the first time at a senatorial level.
The Louisiana pathology is slightly different. Wayne Parent, a professor of political science at LSU, explains that with the discovery of oil and gas around 1912, politicians in the dirt-poor state suddenly controlled a gold mine in tax revenue. “They could spend this money virtually unsupervised,” he says, “as long as they threw enough crumbs to the masses to satisfy them.” This was the formula of populist governors Huey Long; his brother, Earl Long; and Edwin Edwards. Louisiana politicians have always liked big bribes for big projects better than crooked little schemes: Edwards, for instance, is serving time for collecting a $400,000 gratuity in exchange for a casino license.
The stylistic differences between Illinois and Louisiana can be described as David Mamet vs. Walker Percy. The corruption culture in Illinois tends to be mingy, pedestrian, shameful. State legislators who sell their votes for $25 cash in an envelope (a scandal of the 1970s) do not tend toward braggadocio. When former House speaker Dan Rostenkowski was caught filching postage stamps from the House post office, he pleaded guilty and apologized.
Louisiana’s culture of corruption, by contrast, is flamboyant and shameless. Earl Long once said that Louisiana voters “don’t want good government, they want good entertainment.” He spent part of his last term in a mental hospital, where his wife had him committed after he took up with the stripper Blaze Starr. When Sen. Allen Ellender died in office in 1972, Governor Edwards didn’t try to auction off his seat. He appointed his wife, Elaine, possibly to get her out of town. When Edwards ran for governor again in 1983, he said of the incumbent, “If we don’t get Dave Treen out of office, there won’t be anything left to steal.” Raised among figures like these, Louisianans tend to accept corruption as inevitable and to forgive it easily.
In recent years, however, Illinois and Louisiana seem to be copying each other. With Blagojevich, Illinois corruption has gone carnival. And since Katrina, Louisianans seem to have lost their zest for the big heist. There’s been no sympathy for officials caught siphoning disaster funds. It’s going to be a close contest again this year, but I’m betting on the Fighting Illini to claim the national championship.

By Brad Friedman
Those of us who have demanded transparent voting systems because we understand that only the ability for complete citizen oversight and transparency can effectively counter those who would game elections, have been disingenuously criticized over the years as somehow questioning the integrity of the hard-working, honest election officials out there.
The fact is, those who know anything about computer security understand that it is the insiders who are, by far, the greatest threat to security on such systems, as even the phony, GOP-operative-created Baker/Carter National Election Reform Commission determined in its final report: “There is no reason to trust insiders in the election industry any more than in other industries.”
The best election officials in the country, however, will underscore that point, and agree that there is no reason any citizen should ever have to simply “trust” them.
Over the years, we’ve detailed the arrests and other unsavory behavior of many of the not-so-good election officials who, we were told, should simply have been trusted (our “favorite” has always been the case of Monterey CA’s Tony Anchundo, who told us on air we should “trust” him, just a month or two before being arrested on 43 counts). Well, now we’ve got a whole passel of still more crooked officials to add to the list. Moreover: The Kentucky officials arrested and indicted today, “including the circuit court judge, the county clerk, and election officers” of Clay County, have been charged with “changing votes at the voting machine” and showing others how to do it!

From Lexington, Kentucky’s NBC affiliate this afternoon:
Five Clay County officials, including the circuit court judge, the county clerk, and election officers were arrested Thursday after they were indicted on federal charges accusing them of using corrupt tactics to obtain political power and personal gain.
The 10-count indictment, unsealed Thursday, accused the defendants of a conspiracy from March 2002 until November 2006 that violated the Racketeering Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (RICO). RICO is a federal statute that prosecutors use to combat organized crime. The defendants were also indicted for extortion, mail fraud, obstruction of justice, conspiracy to injure voters’ rights and conspiracy to commit voter fraud. According to the indictment, these alleged criminal actions affected the outcome of federal, local, and state primary and general elections in 2002, 2004, and 2006. The article goes on to list some of the criminal actions listed in the indictment. Among them [emphasis added]:

* Clay County Clerk, Freddy Thompson, 45, allegedly provided money to election officers to be distributed by the officers to buy votes and he also instructed officers how to change votes at the voting machine.
* Election officer William E. Stivers, 56, allegedly marked votes or issued tickets to voters who had sold their votes and changed votes at the voting machine.
* Paul E. Bishop, 60, allegedly marked voters or issued tickets to voters who sold their votes and he also hosted alleged meetings at his home where money was pooled together by candidates and distributed to election officers, including himself. He was also accused of instructing the officers how to change votes at the voting machine.
In addition to the absurd charge that those of us who believe in transparency are unduly “attacking” election officials, the latest PR line from e-voting vendors, and election officials alike, is that there is no proof that any election has ever been manipulated electronically. Setting aside that we disagree — wholeheartedly — with that oft-used bit of propaganda, the above indictments would seem to give us a very specific allegation of exactly that, manipulation of electronic votes. Clay County uses the horrible ES&S iVotronic system for all of its votes at the polling place. The iVotronic is a touch-screen Direct Recording Electronic (DRE) device, offering no evidence, of any kind, that any vote has ever been recorded as per the voter’s intent. If the allegations are correct here, there would likely have been no way to discover, via post-election examination of machines or election results, that votes had been manipulated on these machines. ES&S is the largest distributor of voting systems in America and its iVotronic system — which is well-documented to have lost and flipped votes on many occasions — is likely the most widely-used DRE system in the nation. It’s currently in use in some 419 jurisdictions in 18 states including Arkansas, Colorado, Florida, Indiana, Kansas, Kentucky, Missouri, Mississippi, North Carolina, New Jersey, Ohio, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, Virginia, Wisconsin, and West Virginia.

FURTHER UPDATE: Having now reviewed the indictment, as linked above, here are some additional details on the alleged conspiracy which included election fraud though the buying and selling of votes to be cast in a certain way, with the aid of one of the defendants who served as a poll worker during the Early Voting period. Also, at the polling place on Election Day with aid of poll workers, drafted as both Democratic and Republican judges, to elect a slate of candidates — some of them bribed — the conspirators would manipulate the votes of “qualified voters” at the voting machines themselves. Many of the voters, it seems, had no idea that their votes were manipulated after they’d left the touch-screen voting machine. While the Early Voting scheme involved finding voters who might wish to be paid to have their vote cast a certain way, the Election Day scheme, carried out in primary and general elections in at least 2004 and 2006, was accomplished by taking advantage of a “feature” on all DRE (usually touch-screen) voting systems and “voter unfamiliarity with new voting machines.” Essentially, they tricked voters into leaving the ‘booth’ after pressing the “Vote” button on the ES&S iVotronic. That button, does not actually cast the vote, as one might think (and as these voters were told), but instead, it brings up a review screen of the voter’s “ballot.” Instructing the voters that they were done, the conspirators then, after the voter had left, would change the voters’ votes as they saw fit, before finally pressing the “Cast Ballot” button.

Here’s the explanation of how they did this on Election Day, according to the indictment:
* It was part of the conspiracy that the Defendants and their co-conspirators agreed to take advantage of voter unfamiliarity with new voting machines by misleading voters as to the mechanics of casting their votes once they were selected.
* It was part of the conspiracy that WW serve as the Democrat election judge in the Manchester Precinct. It was further part of the conspiracy that CW serve as the Republican election judge in the Manchester Precinct. Both WW and CW were instructed by Defendants Freddy W. Thompson and Charles Wayne Jones to tell voters that when they had pushed a button labeled “Vote” that their votes had been cast, when, in fact, that function merely provided a review screen of the voter’s selections in each race, and that the further step of pushing the “Cast Ballot” button was required. This review screen gave the voter the opportunity to change any candidate selections prior to casting the ballot.
* It was part of the conspiracy that when the misled voters left the voting booth after pushing the “Vote” button, WW and/or CW entered the booth, changed their votes to candidates selected in part by Defendant Russell Cletus Maricle and cast the ballot by pushing the “Cast Ballot” button.
As mentioned, the voters in question were all “qualified voters”. The fraud could not have been accomplished without the conspiracy carried out with the aid of the insiders at the polling place, who changed election results on the voting machines, as needed.
“Many of the qualified voters duly voted for one or more of the aforesaid candidates and their votes were counted and certified as part of the total number of votes cast for such candidates,” the indictment reads. “Other voters had their votes destroyed by the Defendants and their co-conspirators.” The Early Voting scheme, which included vote buying and selling, also required the aid of insiders, stationed at the early voting location:
* It was part of the conspiracy that the Defendants discussed and agreed to buy votes also during the early voting of absentee voters in favor of “the slate.” This plan involved having Defendants William E. Stivers, William B. Morris, and Debra L. Morris pay absentee voters for their vote and then sending them to Defendant Charles Wayne Jones who was acting as operator of the voting machine at the Clay County Clerk’s Office. Voters who sold their votes were given a mark or otherwise told to signal to the Defendant Charles Wayne Jones by Defendants William E. Stivers, William B. Morris, or Debra L. Morris and, based upon the mark andior signal, Defendant Charles Wayne Jones would cast their vote for “the slate.”
* It was part of the conspiracy that the Defendants discussed and agreed that in order to implement the method of corrupting the voting process described above, it would be necessary to cause to be appointed as precinct workers for both major parties persons who were in the conspiracy. It was further necessary that their assignment to respective precincts be coordinated so that no one outside the conspiracy would be in place to observe their actions.
* Over numerous days during on or about a date in January 2006 to on or about November 7,2006, a list of voters who agreed to sell their votes was compiled by Defendants Russell Cletus Maricle and William E. Stivers and other co-conspirators made
arrangements with these persons for voting and payment. On numerous occasions, voters were brought to the courthouse during normal voting and the early voting period for absentee voters and paid to vote for candidates on “the slate” by Defendants William E. Stivers, William B. Morris, and Debra L. Morris.
* On or about May 16,2006, and November 7,2006, Defendants William E. Stivers, William B. Morris, and Debra L. Morris paid voters to vote for members of “the slate,” as described above. They informed these voters to ask for assistance from selected precinct workers who then took them into the voting booth and selected the votes for them.

Of course, to accomplish all of this, the defendants had to be able to draft poll workers who would do what they needed. Three of the named defendants, circuit court judge Russell Cletus Maricle, Clay County Superintendent of Schools Douglas C. Adams, and election officer Charles Wayne Jones, all had among their powers on the election board the ability to “exert influence over the selection of precinct workers” for local elections. Election officer Jones, it’s alleged, is the one who “instructed other election officials…how to change votes at the voting machines.” “Part of the scheme to defraud,” according to the indictment, also included that “defendants instructed election officers to assist the voters who sold their votes and to destroy voter assistance forms which may have resulted so as to not report the number of people they assisted at the voting polls as required by law.”
So will the voting machine company representatives out there (and that includes many election officials who have forgotten for whom they work) continue to report that no election has ever been manipulated via an electronic voting system?…

 State Senator Vincent Fumo
Indicted former state Sen. Vincent Fumo has finished testifying after six days on the stand in his federal corruption trial. The government now plans to call two rebuttal witnesses, former Fumo defense lawyers Richard Sprague and Robert Scandone. They are expected to say they did not advise Fumo that he could destroy e-mail evidence during the FBI investigation.

That testimony would go to the obstruction charges in the 139-count indictment against Fumo. The 65-year-old Fumo is a longtime Democratic power broker from Philadelphia. He spent 30 years in the state Senate. Prosecutors say he defrauded the Senate, a charity and a museum of $3.5 million. Fumo says he was tired after more than a week on the stand in his four-month trial. Sprague, a prominent Philadelphia attorney, is being called to rebut Fumo’s testimony that he was following Sprague’s advice that e-mail messages could be destroyed lawfully. The government says that was obstruction of justice. Sprague was Fumo’s longtime friend, lawyer and a man he has described as a “father figure.” Sprague represented Fumo from the investigation’s early stages in 2003 through the February 2007 indictment, but left the case before trial after an apparent falling out.   
2009 The Associated Press

AP Published: February 16, 2009
The Chicago Tribune will use its news and editorial pages to campaign against what it calls “the Illinois culture of political sleaze.“ The paper said in a Sunday editorial that too much state government has been surrendered to “crooks and opportunists.“ One former governor, George Ryan, is behind bars on a corruption conviction and another, Rod Blagojevich (blah-GOY’-uh-vich), has just been impeached amid allegations that he tried to sell a U.S. Senate seat. The Tribune says its focus will be to attack secrecy in government, entice state and local prosecutors to go after corrupt officials and empower law-abiding public servants to help make Illinois more honest and fair. It also says readers must “demand better” from their public officials.

On December 4, 1875, William Marcy “Boss” Tweed, notorious leader of New York City’s Democratic political machine, escaped from prison and fled to Europe. Between 1865 and 1871, Boss Tweed and his cronies stole millions of dollars from the city treasury. Convicted of forgery and larceny in 1873, Tweed was released in 1875. Immediately rearrested on civil charges, he was allowed daily visits to his family in the company of his jailor. On one of these trips, Tweed made his escape.

Elected an alderman in 1851, the former bookkeeper and volunteer fireman worked his way up New York City’s Democratic hierarchy by holding various elected and unelected positions in the municipal government. He served one congressional term, but operated most effectively at the state level. By 1868, the year he gained a seat in the New York senate, Tweed firmly controlled the state Democratic Party. Two years later, he maneuvered passage of a revised city charter. A newly instituted board of audit became the principle means by which the Boss and his friends siphoned the city treasury of between twenty million and two-hundred million dollars.

The movement to overthrow the “Tweed Ring” included the New York Times, Harper’s Weekly cartoonist Thomas Nast, and reforming Democrat Samuel J. Tilden. On July 22, 1871, the newspaper began publishing an exposé of the Tweed Ring’s activities. Nast followed up with cartoons roasting Tweed. “Let’s stop them damned pictures,” the Boss supposedly said, “I don’t care so much what the papers write about—my constituents can’t read—but damn it, they can see pictures.” Despite bribes and threats, Nast continued to lambast Tweed weekly on the pages of Harper’s. Meanwhile, Tilden’s efforts to oust Tweed solidified his name as a reformer—a reputation that made him Governor of New York in 1874 and nearly put him in the White House in 1877.

With his 1873 conviction behind him, Tweed was sued by New York State for $6 million. Held in debtor’s prison until he could post half that amount as bail, the former boss had few options. Still wealthy, his prison cell was fairly luxurious. Yet Tweed was determined to escape. Fleeing to Spain, he worked as a common seaman on a Spanish ship until recognized by his likeness to a Nast cartoon and captured. Extradited to New York, William Marcy Tweed died in debtor’s prison on April 12, 1878.

Boss Tweed, acting as a policeman, although wearing the uniform of a convict, holds two boys by the collar with one hand, and carries a billy club in the other. Reform Tweed: “If all the people want is to have somebody arrested, I’ll have you plunderers convicted. You will be allowed to escape; nobody will be hurt; and then Tilden will go to the White House, and I to Albany as Governor.”

The political machine that created Boss Tweed and that Tweed strengthened remained a powerful force in New York City politics. Through a system of patronage and charity, Tammany Hall, the executive committee of the New York City Democratic Party, commanded the allegiance of many voters. Lacking a government safety net, poor citizens relied on the party for access to employment, or for help with funeral expenses. Public works projects like Central Park provided politicians with patronage opportunities ranging from lucrative contracts to day work digging ditches.