Shirley got the goods on other electeds

From the NY Times:

Soon after prosecutors and the Federal Bureau of Investigation revealed last month that a New York State assemblyman had been secretly making audio and video recordings for law enforcement, other legislators began nervously joking that they could never be sure who else was taping them.

Little did they know.

On Friday, prosecutors disclosed that Shirley L. Huntley, when she was a Democratic state senator from Queens, had secretly recorded conversations with seven elected officials and two other people after she was confronted by the F.B.I. and asked about her alleged participation in criminal schemes involving embezzlement and bribery.

The revelation that Ms. Huntley was taping conversations suggested a widening dragnet in Albany: the spectacle of two sitting lawmakers — one a senator, the other an assemblyman — independently recording conversations at the behest of federal authorities.

The undercover work of the assemblyman, Nelson L. Castro, a Bronx Democrat who cooperated to avoid prosecution for perjury, helped federal prosecutors in Manhattan with an investigation that led to charges against another Bronx Democrat, Assemblyman Eric A. Stevenson, for accepting bribes. On Friday, prosecutors said in court papers that Ms. Huntley’s recordings of a senator and two other elected officials “did yield evidence useful to law enforcement authorities.”

The senator was not identified in the court documents, but a person with knowledge of the matter said the senator was John L. Sampson, a Brooklyn Democrat and former Senate leader who has long been under investigation. Mr. Sampson has not been charged, and neither Mr. Sampson nor his lawyer responded to requests for comment.

You have to wonder why the others continue to talk to those under indictment.

Even more corrupt pols!

From the NY Times:

Two days after a political corruption scandal rocked Albany, a new, unrelated bribery scheme emerged on Thursday, adorned with a can-you-top-this quality: For more than a year, a sitting state legislator wore a wire intended to entrap at least one of his colleagues.

The secret recordings helped lead to the arrest of Eric A. Stevenson, a Democratic state assemblyman representing parts of the South Bronx, who was charged by federal prosecutors in Manhattan with accepting more than $22,000 in bribes to help developers open adult day care centers in his district. Mr. Stevenson was also accused of introducing legislation to block competing developers from building new centers for three years.

He seemed keenly aware of the risk of getting caught, as so many of his colleagues in Albany had been before, according to a criminal complaint released on Thursday.

“Be careful of those things man, the recorders and all those things,” he was recorded saying. “A lot of guys,” he continued, were “working to put a lot of people away, man, believe that.”

Mr. Stevenson’s wariness was well founded: his conversations were being recorded by two cooperating witnesses, including Assemblyman Nelson L. Castro, who had agreed to work with investigators as part of a deal to avoid prosecution on state perjury charges. Mr. Castro agreed to resign once his cooperation led to an arrest; he announced his departure on Thursday afternoon.