Ex-Southeast Queens senator charged in bribery scheme released from prison early

Former Southeast Queens Senator Malcolm Smith was moved last year from federal prison to his home in Jamaica, where he’ll serve out the remainder of his sentence.  File photo Brooklyn Daily Eagle 

By Jacob Kaye

Former State Sen. Malcolm Smith was released from federal prison last year and has been serving the remainder of his prison sentence from his home in Jamaica, according to media reports.

The 64-year-old ex-Senator was sprung from a federal prison in Lewisburg, Pennsylvania and sent home in May 2020, according to the New York Post. Released on community confinement, Smith will serve out the remaining months of his sentence from his house in Queens.

The Democrat who represented District 14 in the State Senate and was the legislative body’s first Black majority leader, was sent to prison for seven years in 2015 after he was convicted on conspiracy, wire fraud, bribery, and extortion charges in federal court. The charges stem from his corrupt efforts to make the ballot as a Republican in the 2013 mayoral race.

Smith, whose district covered parts of St. Albans, Cambria Heights, Jamaica, Hollis, Rosedale, Laurelton, Kew Gardens, and Queens Village and is now represented by Senator Leroy Comrie, will be released from custody on Oct. 22, 2021, according to the Federal Bureau of Prisons.

Smith could not be reached for comment.

His conviction dates back to 2013, when, in an attempt to switch party lines in a bid for the mayor’s office, Smith bribed several New York City Republican Party leaders with help from former New York City Council member Daniel Halloran and an undercover FBI agent posing as a wealthy real estate agent, according to the criminal complaint.

Desire to make the party’s ticket wasn’t unusual for Smith, who at the time had joined the Independent Democratic Conference, a group of Democratic legislators in Albany who formed a partnership with the state Republican Party. Smith, a leader in the group, was stripped of his membership when the allegations against him were first released.

Smith, who was first elected to the Senate in November 2000, was also found guilty of promising to divert at least $500,000 of state transportation funding to the undercover agent posing as a real estate developer, the charges said.

The office of the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York, which prosecuted Smith, declined to comment on his release.

Halloran, who represented Council District 19 in Northeast Queens, was convicted in a separate trial and sentenced to 10 years in federal lockup in New Jersey. The Republican was also released from federal prison last year amid the COVID-19 outbreak.

“It’s a little surreal, everything out there is crazy,” Halloran told the Eagle at the time of his release in June 2020. “I came home to a world that's not quite the way it was when I left it.”

Smith and Halloran were the latest disgraced politicians to be released from prison this past year to slow the spread of COVID-19 in prisons and jails nationwide.

Former Brooklyn Assembly member William Boyland was released from prison and sent to home confinement in February. Boyland is currently in the sixth year of a 14 year sentence related to bribery and corruption charges in 2014.

Sheldon Silver, the former Assembly speaker who was once one of the most powerful people in New York politics, almost made it home when he was allowed to leave Otisville prison in upstate New York on furlough last week. Silver, who’s currently serving a six-and-a-half-year sentence on federal corruption charges, was ordered to return to prison on May 6.