Former state Senate Majority Leader Dean Skelos and his son, Adam, were convicted on all counts Friday for shaking down more than $300,000 in payoffs by trading the father’s influence in Albany for no-show jobs and cash for his son.
A Manhattan federal jury deliberated eight hours over two days before finding both men guilty on charges of conspiracy, extortion and soliciting bribes.
They each face up to 130 years in the slammer for the eight felonies.
The Skeloses remained stoned-faced as the verdicts were read, but Dean’s wife, Gail, openly wept in the front row of the courtroom. At one point, Dean rubbed Adam’s shoulders.
Both father and son declined to comment as they walked out of federal district court.
Under state law, the elder Skelos was automatically stripped of his longtime job as a Republican representing the southwest corner of Nassau County — which he leveraged into a post as one of the three most powerful people in state government.
Dean’s name had already been stripped from his office door in Albany by Thursday afternoon.
“The swift convictions of Sheldon Silver and Dean Skelos beg an important question — how many prosecutions will it take before Albany gives the people of New York the honest government they deserve?” US Attorney Preet Bharara, who was in the courtroom as the verdict was announced, said in a statement.
‘How many prosecutions will it take before Albany gives the people of New York the honest government they deserve?’
- US Attorney Preet Bharara
The verdict came less than two weeks after Skelos’ onetime counterpart in the Assembly — ex-Speaker Sheldon Silver, a Manhattan Democrat — was convicted in an unrelated, $4 million corruption case.
It also flew in the face of repeated predictions by the elder Skelos — including as recently as Wednesday evening — that he and his son would be acquitted of the shakedown scheme.
During the Skeloses’ four-week trial, prosecutors alleged that Dean turned his statehouse office into a “cash cow” to fund Adam’s lavish Long Island lifestyle, including a $675,000 house with a pool in Rockville Centre.
Jurors heard dozens of FBI telephone wiretaps — evidence more commonly used against mobsters and drug dealers — in which father and son schemed with each other and bad-mouthed Gov. Andrew Cuomo.
“He’s such a p—y!” Adam, 33, said of Cuomo during a December 2014 chat in which Dean, 67, also blasted the governor as “full of s–t.”
The feds listened in on Adam’s calls even though he used a disposable cellphone, with prosecutor Jason Masimore noting during closing arguments Wednesday: “Who uses a burner phone but people who are committing crimes?”
Neither defendant testified or offered any evidence, but the prosecution presented a parade of nearly two dozen witnesses, including ex-US Sen. Al D’Amato.
The Republican powerhouse and longtime friend of Dean’s told jurors that the elder Skelos ignored his warning that Adam was causing a “disruption” by failing to show up for a $78,000-a-year job that his dad strong-armed for him at a malpractice-insurance firm.
“He told me Adam really needed the job. His wife, I believe, was expecting. He needed the medical insurance,” D’Amato testified.
The CEO of Physicians’ Reciprocal Insurers, Anthony Bonomo, also testified that Adam threatened his supervisor for insisting that Adam show up for work, telling the man: “If you talk to me like that again, I’ll smash your f–king head in!”
But instead of firing Adam, Bonomo — who got immunity for ratting out the Skeloses — said he gave Adam a new position because “I did not want to have a problem in Albany.”
Another cooperating witness — Charles Dorego, general counsel of the politically active Glenwood Management real estate firm — testified that Dean had relentlessly “badgered” him about “helping” out Adam.
Dorego said he lined up a $10,000-a-month job for which Adam wasn’t qualified at the AbTech Industries pollution control company, and also arranged a $20,000 “referral” fee for work that Adam didn’t actually perform.
Dorego testified that he did the favors out of fear that the elder Skelos would block legislation favorable to Glenwood, one of the state’s biggest political donors.
“[Dean] could do that if he wanted to and if he was angry enough, he might,” Dorego said.
“I had seen him angry, and I had seen him make threats.”