Vincent Leibell - FBI Investigation, Conviction

FBI Investigation, Conviction

On June 26, 2010, the Journal News reported that FBI subpoenaed records for the home that Leibell built in Patterson, New York. On December 6, 2010, Leibell plead guilty to felony bribery, tax evasion, and obstruction of justice charges related to $43,000 in cash kickbacks he took from 2003 to 2006. Leibell had resigned from the State Senate on December 2, 2010, just prior to being arrested, which controversially due to a loophole in the New York State pension system allows him to keep a $71,000 pension despite his conviction.

The charges stated Leibell doled out $6.5 million in taxpayer funded "member items" to nonprofit groups he controlled from 2005 to 2010, according to records maintained by the Empire Center for New York State Policy and the Albany Project. He was sentenced to twenty one months in Federal Prison, after a Federal Judge rejected a plea by Leibell's lawyer to have the former Senator sent overseas to do "nation building work" in the Middle East instead of jailtime, a suggestion which outraged the media and local residents whom Leibell had betrayed by his actions.

The Leibell property in Patterson, New York formerly belonged to the late actress Elizabeth Montgomery, who employed Leibell's law firm to attend to certain legal matters. Leibell later purchased a portion of the property after the settlement of the Montgomery estate. Through use of Leibell's Senate position, the rest of the land became Wonder Lake State Park, which, from its founding in 1998 until 2006, had no discernible public access points.

Critics called Wonder Lake a personal park for the Senator, but Lebeill tried to assert it was used by hikers, though the park was shuttered nonetheless by the State amidst the 2010 New York State budget crisis. Leibell also used $230,000 in taxpayer dollars to construct a wooden footbridge on Route 311 in Patterson which critics derided as a "bridge to nowhere." Ironically, Leibell had moved to the home from Tammany Hall Road, named after the corrupt political machine run by Boss Tweed in mid-19th century New York.

"Leibell has only himself to blame for the fact that, after 28 years in public office, this conviction will be the capstone to that career," said Preet Bharara, the United States attorney for Manhattan who announced Leibell's guilty plea. Bharara explained that the FBI recorded Leibell threatening not to pay invoices sent to Leibell's 501(c)(3) nonprofit by an unnamed attorney unless the attorney paid half of the invoice amount back to Leibell in cash.