Former New York City schools food czar Eric Goldstein was given a lenient two-year prison sentence Monday for a bribery scandal that resulted in students being served tainted chicken.
Goldstein, 56, was facing a possible 6½ years in federal prison, but a Brooklyn judge cut him and his three co-conspirators a break Monday — after the corrupt school boss and his poultry-peddling friends pleaded that their lives were already spoiled.
“These four defendants are indeed fundamentally good men. They lived good lives,” United States Circuit Judge Denny Chin said as he passed sentence in Brooklyn Federal Court Monday. “But they did go astray, and severely astray … I acknowledge that the case has already placed a great burden on the defendant’s families.”
Chin added, “On the other hand, this was indeed a serious, brazen crime, the bribing of a high-ranking public official. … And I think the defendants knew precisely what they were doing.”
A jury convicted Goldstein and three businessmen, Blaine Iler, Michael Turley and Brian Twomey, of bribery and bribery conspiracy charges last year.
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The co-conspirators were each facing 4¼ to 5¼ years behind bars based on sentencing guidelines, but Chin went low with them as well — a year and a day for Iler, 37, and 15 months for Twomey, 51 and Turley, 54.
He recommended all four serve their time in minimum-security prison camps. Chin did not set a surrender date, as they’re planning to appeal the conviction.
Goldstein, described in court as the No. 3 official in the city’s school system, controlled thousands of employees and the city’s $1.2 billion yellow bus budget, plus a $550 million school food program and a $7.5 million school sports operation.
Prosecutors argued at trial the three men, who owned the Texas-based Somma Food Group, started an imported beef business in 2015 with Goldstein as a back-channel to bribe him to get Somma’s food on school menus.
Goldstein fast-tracked a yogurt parfait made by Somma in 2015, and did the same for Somma’s chicken tenders and drumsticks in 2016. The chicken turned out to be a barf-inducing disaster, and kids were fed oozing drumsticks and tenders with bits of bone, metal and plastic.
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Court Evidence Eric Goldstein, left, with co-defendant Brian Twomey. (Court Evidence)
After a school staffer choked on a bone in a tender and nearly died in September 2016, the Somma execs gave Goldstein their stakes in the beef biz, plus another $66,700, to get their poultry back on school plates.
Goldstein’s lawyer, Neil Kelly of the Federal Defenders, insisted that he made would have made every one of his menu decisions regardless of his relationship with the Somma three.
“These were decisions he was going to make anyway, because they were right,” Kelly said. “This is a unique individual. This is someone who devoted his life to improving the lives of millions of public school children.”
The charges have brought Goldstein to financial ruin, destroyed his reputation and career and devastated his family, Kelly added, complaining that his face was “splashed on the cover of the Post, the Daily News and the Daily Mail.”
A weepy Goldstein asked the judge not to “punish” his family by imprisoning him.
“They have suffered tremendously this past few years. I humbly ask that you show mercy on them,” he said.
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Assistant U.S. Attorney Robert Polemeni pushed back on the defense attorneys’ claims that the charges didn’t amount to a typical corruption case, and that Goldstein’s plans in the import beef business would have meant possibly making far more than the nearly $100,000 in bribes he received.
“He ran a nearly $3 billion operation. This is not a maybe-a-corruption case, a maybe-a-bribery case,” he said. “The fact that cash wasn’t put in bags, the fact that Mr. Goldstein made decisions he would have made, it doesn’t matter. That’s not what this is about.”
Goldstein and Kelly declined comment outside the courthouse Monday.
One onlooker, retired NYPD Sgt. Pat Russo, who sat in on the trial, provided information to the FBI and worked with a whistleblower, said Goldstein got off too easy.
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Russo’s father, Frank, ran a food vendor company and pleaded guilty in a bid-rigging scandal back in 2000.
“My father received 21 months in prison but he pleaded guilty,” Russo said. “I think it’s ridiculous that Eric only received 24 months and he refused to plead guilty. … When I took over the business for my father, the only way I was allowed to stay in business, and I agreed, was to hire a federal monitor.”
Russo added, “I understand Eric’s life was destroyed, but he did that to himself.”
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