Lobbyist to serve 27 months for campaign contributions scheme

Once powerful lobbyist Paul Magliocchetti was sentenced Friday to 27
months in prison for making hundreds of thousands of dollars in
illegal campaign donations and lying to the Federal Election
Commission.

U.S. District Court Judge T.S. Ellis III also sentenced Magliocchetti
to two years of supervised release and ordered him to pay a $75,000
fine.

{mosads}Magliocchetti, a former staffer on the House Defense Appropriations
subcommittee who had close ties to the late Rep. John Murtha (D-Pa.),
in September pleaded guilty in a U.S. district court in Alexandria, Va.,
to one count each of making false statements, illegal conduit
political contributions and illegal corporate political contributions.

For two decades Magliocchetti ran a top lobbying shop specializing in
defense earmarks. Magliocchetti showered lawmakers with millions of
dollars in campaign contributions — some of them from straw men who
were illegally reimbursed for cutting the checks. The lawmakers who
received the campaign cash, including Murtha and other senior
appropriators such as Reps. Peter Visclosky (D-Ind.) and Jim Moran
(D-Va.), secured millions of dollars in earmarks for PMA clients.

“Paul Magliocchetti spent half of a decade gaming the system. He
concocted a massive scheme to secretly funnel money to political
campaigns — all so that he could gain wealth and prestige,” said
Assistant Attorney General Lanny A. Breuer of the Criminal Division.
“As today’s sentence makes clear, he must now pay a price. We will
continue to bring to justice those who hide the source of campaign
funds and thus damage the integrity of our election process.”

Before Ellis imposed the sentence, Magliocchetti said that he accepted
responsibility for misconduct affecting his family, friends and
employees at his lobbying firm.

“I know this is not a victimless crime,” he said, according to The
Associated Press.

The firm shut down after the FBI raided its offices in November 2008.

Murtha, Visclosky, Moran and others who received the donations were
unaware of Magliocchetti’s scheme, the Justice Department investigation
found. At one point during the investigation, Visclosky temporarily
stepped down as chairman of the House Energy and Water Appropriations
subcommittee after being subpoenaed by a federal grand jury
investigating the now-defunct PMA Group.

Magliocchetti admitted that, from 2003 to 2008, he used members of his
family, friends and PMA lobbyists to make the unlawful campaign
contributions. Aware of the strict limits on individual federal
campaign contributions — and an outright ban on corporate
contributions — Magliocchetti conceded that he instructed the conduits
to write checks out of personal checking accounts to specific
candidates for federal office and then reimbursed the individuals
using personal corporate money.

Through the scheme, Magliocchetti caused several lawmakers’ campaign
committees to file false reports with the FEC regarding the
contributions they had received.

Mark Magliocchetti, Paul’s 34-year-old son, in early August pleaded
guilty to making illegal corporate contributions. He was sentenced to
14 days in prison and five and a half months of home confinement.