Sheldon Silver's Son-In-Law Makes Plea Deal With Feds

Some political corruption news amid the Weingarten/Clinton/AFT outrage:

Marcello Trebitsch, the son-in-law of former state Assembly leader Sheldon Silver, pleaded guilty in federal court Monday to one count count of securities fraud.

"As Marcello Trebitsch admitted in court today, he ran a multimillion-dollar Ponzi scheme, defrauding investors who put their faith in him and entrusted him with their hard-earned savings," U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara said in a statement. "He returned their faith with deceit and self-dealing, lying about his trading losses and using investor money on himself."

Trebitsch, who is married to Silver's daughter, raised money for his firm, Allese Capital, by telling investors they would recieve double-digit returns. Instead, he used their money to make up for his net trading losses.

"Mr. Trebitsch has accepted responsibility for the poor judgment he used," Benjamin Brafman, Trebitsch's lawyer, said in a statement. "We believe the Court will conclude that Mr. Trebitsch, although guilty of a crime, is a fundamentally good man who was in over his head when dealing with a very sophisticated investor, who while defrauded, was nevertheless also trying to 'use' Mr. Trebitsch to further his own personal agenda."

In an email to Capital, Brafman said Trebitsch "has no involvement at all in Silver's case. Period."

Albany Project notes that Trebitsch's sentencing day is November 2, the same day that Shelly Silver's trial starts.

Which seems like quite the coincidence.

Just something note - even when you think nothing's going on in the corruption stuff in the dog days of the summer, stuff's, you know, going on.