By MICHAEL HINKELMAN hinkelm@phillynews.com 215-854-26561 Apr 3,20071600 words, 0 images
Two Philadelphia businessmen who succumbed to the same temptation - pay-to-play politics at City Hall • were sentenced to prison yesterday in separate cases.
Both Louis Charlock and Joseph C. Moderski will be cooling their heels this summer in a federal slammer. Chartock was given a year and a day in jail plus a year of home detention with electronic monitoring for his role in bribing convicted former City Councilman Rick Mariano.
Moderski got 14 months in connection with an unrelated influence-peddling scheme at Philadelphia International Airport.
Chartock and Moderski were ordered to surrender to the Bureau of Prisons on June 2 and June 15, respectively, and were fined $20,000 and $15,000.
Chartock, 74, of Philadelphia, could have received a guideline sentence of more than four years, but he got a break from U.S. District Judge Lawrence F. Stengel.
Stengel conceded that Chartock had played an "integral part" of an illicit scheme to "cover up bribes [to Mariano] and launder the money" through third parties, motivated, the judge said, by Charlock's "sense of entitlement" that Mariano should work for him.
But Stengel also said Charlock's age, medical condition and family ties "strongly supported" his request for leniency.
Charlock's lawyer, Stephen Lacheen, said a lengthy prison term would have amounted to a "death sentence" for Chartock, who suffers from kidney- and heart-related ailments.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Kenya Mann said the sentence was "fair and just" given all the circumstances. The elder Chartock and his son Philip were convicted by a federal jury in May of paying more than $23,000 in bribes to Mariano in exchange for favors for their business, Erie Steel Ltd.
Philip Chartock was sentenced to three years and four months in the pen and fined $25,000 by Stengel last month. Mariano, convicted on corruption charges in a separate trial last year, is serving a six-year sentence.
The elder Chartock maintained he was not involved in the day-to-day operations of Erie Steel, which his son took over in 1999.
The Charlocks wrote three checks in 2002 to pay off Mariano's credit-card debt.
The first check was paid directly to Mariano's credit-card company and the second and third payments were laundered through third parties. Mariano voted on legislation to make Erie Steel eligible for special tax relief and to intercede with city inspectors after Erie was cited for air pollution.
Moderski, 70, of Bryn Mawr, pleaded guilty in September to conspiracy and fraud charges in connection with an illegal campaign-contribution scheme.
Sentencing guidelines called for a prison term of 10 to 16 months for Moderski. His attorney, William Spade, said the sentence was "more severe" than he expected. He had argued for probation or confinement in a halfway house. Moderski was a paid consultant to Sky Sites, a subsidiary of JC Decaux, the French media company that provides advertising displays at airports.
In 2000, Moderski sought $10,000 from Sky Sites to donate to Mayor Street's campaign committee. The feds said two Sky Sites executives, Joseph Evans and Eric Selby, and Moderski, conspired to pay Moderski a $10,000 sham bonus to disguise the illegal campaign contribution.
Corporate political contributions are prohibited under state law.
In 2001, Moderski, Selby and another airport consultant, Terry Crockett, agreed Crockett would submit a bogus invoice for $30,000 so they could each make $10,000 contributions to a political-action committee headed by lawyer and power broker Ron White, according to prosecutors.
White was indicted on corruption charges in 2004 but died before he could be brought to trial.
Evans, Selby and Crockett were all given probationary sentences for their roles in the scheme, but U.S. District Judge James T. Giles said yesterday that Moderski was "more culpable" than the others.
Decaux and Street were not charged with any wrongdoing in the case. *
