topics: |  trivia | history

Good Ol’ Boss Tweed

Boss William Tweed raised corruption to an art form. As a member of New
York’s Tammany Hall (a political club), Tweed and his cronies, including
Mayor Fernando Wood, ran New York in the Civil War era as their own private
money factory.

The building of City Hall was a clinic in graft: the city was charged
$7,500 for every thermometer, $41,190 for each broom, and $5.7 million for
furniture and carpets. One carpenter even received almost $361,000 for a
single month’s work. Tweed once bought 300 benches for $5 each, then sold
them to the city for $600 a pop. And although he was crooked as a dog’s
hind leg, Tweed does get a bit of credit from some historians for
undertaking many important projects that improved life in New York (albeit
at enormous financial gain to himself). Tweed’s illicit profits were said
to be in the range of $200 million, and that’s in the 1860s! The law
eventually caught up with the Boss, though, and he died in prison in 1878.

[AM: his successful prosecution was one of the high-profile cases that
started to bring down corruption in US public life.]

President Ulysses S. Grant

The 18th president of the United States was a great war general. But he was
less skilled at avoiding scandal. To be fair, it wasn’t so much Grant himself
as the cast of characters around him that caused all the trouble.
Grant’s period in office (1869–1877) was marred by four major scandals:
 - Crédit Mobilier, a railroad construction scandal during which the federal
	government and Union Pacific stockholders were bilked out of some $20
	million;
 - Whiskey Ring, wherein over 100 Treasury Department officials were convicted
	of taking bribes and cutting deals for distillers;
 - Indian Ring, another scandal of bribes from companies licensed to trade on
 	Indian reservations;
 - Black Friday, a scheme involving Grant’s brother-in-law that attempted to
	artificially inflate the price of gold.

Grant Administration Scandals (based on Wikipedia)

Scandals 	Description

Black Friday	Speculators corner the gold market and
1869    	ruin the economy for several years.

New York 	alleged corruption ring set up at the New York Custom House
custom house	under two of Grant's appointments, collectors Moses H. Grinnell
1872		and Thomas Murphy.  Three major investigations to unearth it.

Star Route 	Corrupt system of postal contractors, clerks, and brokers to
Postal Ring	obtain lucrative Star Route postal contracts.
1872

Salary Grab	Congressmen receive a retroactive $5,000 bonus for previous
1872   		term served.

Sanborn Contract   John Sanborn collected taxes at exorbitant fees and
1874		split the profits among associates.

Delano Affair	Secretary of Interior, Columbus Delano, allegedly took bribes
1875   		to secure fraudulent land grants.

Pratt & Boyd	Attorney General George H. Williams allegedly received a bribe
1875  		not to prosecute the Pratt & Boyd company.

Whiskey Ring	Corrupt government officials and whiskey makers steal millions
1875		of dollars in national tax evasion scam.

Trading Post 	Secretary of War William Belknap allegedly takes extortion
1876		money from trading contractor at Fort Sill.

Cattelism	Secretary of Navy George Robeson allegedly receives bribes from
1876		Cattell & Company for lucrative Naval contracts.

Safe Burglary	Private Secretary Orville Babcock indicted over framing a
Conspiracy	private citizen for uncovering corrupt Washington contractors.
1876

The Honorable Judge Thomas J. Maloney

In the 1970s and ’80s, the Cook County Circuit Court system based in Chicago
was so corrupt and dirty that two federal investigations, Operations Greylord
and Gambat, were undertaken to expose it. Lots of judges went to jail for their
underhanded dealings, but the worst of the worst was the not-so-honorable
Thomas J. Maloney.

During the 13 years he spent on the bench, from 1977 to 1990, Maloney "fixed"
as many as six murder trials, taking bribes from $10,000 to $100,000 from
gangs to convict members of other gangs of murder or manslaughter.
Eventually, the justice got his own justice as he was indicted and sentenced
to 15 years and 9 months in prison. The fact is he’s the only judge in
Illinois history to be convicted of fixing a trial. Of course, there would
have been another in the same Greylord operation, Judge Frank J. Wilson, but
he blew his own brains out just before the Feds came a-knocking.

In 1981, William J. Bracey was convicted of triple murder and sentenced to
death by Maloney.  After Maloney's conviction, he claimed that his judgment be
investigated for possibly being influenced by bribery.
---
Ian Ayres
The Twin Faces of Judicial Corruption: Extortion and Bribery
Yale Law School Legal Scholarship Repository
1-1-1997
http://digitalcommons.law.yale.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=2495&context=fss_papers

On January 25, 1990, I stood in a Cook County Circuit Court and accused
the presiding judge, the Honorable Thomas J. Maloney, of extortion. I was
filing a final amended post-conviction petition on behalf of Dino Titone.
Titone had been convicted and sentenced to death in bench trials by Judge
Maloney for participating in the murders of Aldo Fratto and Tullio Infelise.
My post-conviction petition alleged that Titone's own lawyer had solicited
money from Titone on behalf of Judge Maloney, and that Titone with the help
of his father had ultimately paid Judge Maloney $10,000.

The petition alleged that after Judge Maloney received the money, an FBI
investigation of judicial corruption in Cook County - code name "Operation
Greylord" - became public and that Judge Maloney convicted and sentenced Titone
to death in order to cover up Maloney's felonious conduct.

When he read the allegations, Maloney went ballistic. He forced me to answer a
series of personal questions regarding my age and place of birth.

Even though I repeatedly characterized the deal between Judge Maloney and my
client as "extortion," the lllinois Supreme Court insisted on referring to the
underlying transaction as a "bribery conspiracy." So which was it: bribery or
extortion?

And should the characterization of a conspiracy as "bribery" or "extortion"
determine whether a convicted defendant eams a new trial?

My answers to these questions are straightforward. First, it will often be
impossible to distinguish "bribery" and "extortion," because conspiracies will
routinely combine elements of both deals. Second, deciding whether to grant a
new trial should not turn on this characterization. Any defendant who can show
that a judge accepted money (or negotiated for money) should be granted a new
trial - regardless of whether the conspiracy seems more like bribery or
extortion.