Sheldon Silver
⚠️ All Corruption Flags (3)
First conviction: In November 2015, a federal jury convicted Sheldon Silver on 7 counts including honest services fraud, extortion, and money laundering. Prosecutors proved Silver took nearly $4 million in payments in exchange for legislative favors performed for a cancer researcher and real-estate developers.
On May 3, 2016, U.S. District Judge Valerie E. Caproni sentenced Silver to 12 years in federal prison and ordered him to pay $5.3 million in ill-gotten gains plus $1.75 million in additional fines. The conviction was overturned on appeal in 2017 by the Second Circuit following the Supreme Court's narrowing of corruption-statute interpretation in McDonnell v. United States.
Retried in 2018, Silver was again convicted on all counts. On July 27, 2018, Judge Caproni resentenced him to 7 years in federal prison. Silver died in federal custody in 2022 at age 77 while serving his sentence.