A federal judge agreed yesterday to slice two years off former Washington lobbyist Jack Abramoff’s prison sentence for a fraudulent Florida casino boat deal, citing his cooperation with investigators.
The case is separate from the one in which Abramoff, 49, was sentenced to four years in jail last week for his central role in the influence-peddling scandal which upended Washington and helped Democrats regain control of Congress in 2006.
But the newest decision guarantees that the disgraced lobbyist will serve no more than an additional four years in jail.
Abramoff’s attorneys had sought to have the Florida sentence reduced from nearly six years to two.
He has already served nearly two years for the SunCruz Casinos case, in which he and former partner Adam Kidan pleaded guilty to fraud in 2006 for concocting fake documents indicating they had invested $23 million of their own money into a gambling boat fleet.
US District Judge Paul Huck called the original request to shake four years off the sentence “greedy” and said it would not reflect the gravity of the fraud involved in the 2000 purchase of SunCruz Casinos by Abramoff and a partner, according to the Associated Press.
“We’ve got two distinct sets of crimes. They are very serious,” Huck said. “It could be that he would walk out of jail very soon. I’m not going to do that.”
Abramoff’s partner, Kidan, 44, was also rewarded with a sentence reduction in June for his cooperation with prosecutors, particularly in the probe of a 2001 gangland-style slaying in Fort Lauderdale of former SunCruz owner Konstantinos “Gus” Boulis.
Three men, one with ties to New York’s Gambino crime family, are awaiting trial for that murder and Kidan is expected to testify.
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1 Comments
#1. TACOM 02.17.2009
Oh yes, let’s reduce this scum’s sentence for the honorable deed of “ratting on his fellow criminals! This judge should have added two years for Abramoff’s lack of loyalty in cowardly turning on his former friends. Why should judges be granted the authority to lessen a sentence in the first place. Who vouches for their integrity? They are lawyers after all!
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