A federal appeals court in Manhattan upheld the public corruption conviction of Joe Percoco, a former top aide and close personal confidante to disgraced ex-Gov. Andrew Cuomo.
The US Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit on Wednesday also upheld the convictions of other defendants, including former SUNY official Alain Kaloyeros, a key figure in a bid-rigging scandal involving Cuomo’s upstate economic development program known as the Buffalo Billion.
Percoco, who was once so close to the governor he was likened by him to a brother, was sentenced to six years in prison for bribery and honest services fraud in 2018. He ran Cuomo’s 2014 re-election and was known as his political enforcer.
Percoco — whom the ex-governor once called a “third son” to his late father, former Gov. Mario Cuomo — was convicted of accepting more than $300,000 from companies that wanted to gain influence with the Cuomo administration.
At trial, prosecutors showed that he even referred to his bribes as “ziti,” a term he lifted from HBO’s mob show “The Sopranos.”
“Where the hell is the ziti?” “I have no ziti,” he wrote in emails to his co-conspirator, the corrupt Albany lobbyist Todd Howe.
“Joe watched the show,” Howe, the government’s star witness, told jurors at trial.
During his appeal, Percoco’s lawyers argued that the jury was given improper instructions regarding bribery and honest services fraud.
The three appellate court judges — Reenga Raggi, Denny Chin and Richard Sullivan — rejected the argument in a unanimous 55-page ruling released Wednesday.
In one scheme, Percoco was found to have used his influence to secure a $7,500-a-month, “low-show” job for his wife, Lisa, with power company Competitive Power Ventures in exchange for helping the firm.
Percoco argued that the $285,000 forfeiture for the pay Competitive Power Ventures gave to his wife should be exempt from forfeiture.
The judges shot down that argument, too.
“She would not have received the job absent the bribery scheme, which obviously could not be carried out lawfully. Her low-show job was a cover for, and in furtherance of, the illegal bribery scheme,” the judges said.
The same judges also rejected the appeals of other convicted defendants involved in bid-rigging schemes in Buffalo and Syracuse tied to Cuomo’s upstate development programs — Kaloyeros, Buffalo contractor Louis Ciminelli and Syracuse real estate executives Steve Aiello and Joseph Gerardi.
Lobbyist Howe, a pal of both Percoco and Cuomo who was the middleman in the corrupt acts, received leniency after becoming a government witness in the cases against other defendants.
Cuomo, a three-term Democrat, resigned as governor last month after a devastating investigative report released by state Attorney General Letitia James concluded he sexually harassed 11 women, including current and former government staffers and a state trooper. He denied wrongdoing but stepped down to avoid impeachment and removal from office.
