New York Assemblyman William Boyland, Jr. was arrested this week for allegedly soliciting $250,000 in bribes from undercover FBI agents, just a short time after he was cleared of other corruption charges.
Boyland (D), who is an Assemblyman representing parts of Brooklyn, was arrested Tuesday fter an investigation that began in August, 2010. According to the complaint, from then until August 2011, Boyland solicited “a stream” of bribes worth more than $250,000, and “accepted thousands of dollars in cash in exchange for his taking official actions on behalf of” what turned out to be a cooperating witness and two undercover agents with the FBI. The money was in exchange for Boyland’s “official action and influence as specific opportunities arose” in connection with the carnival business.
The cooperating witness was a carnival promoter, who purported to be scouting locations to set up carnivals in Brooklyn. One of the FBI agents posed as a family friend and business associate of the carnival promoter, and the second posed as a business associate of the first agent.
Around March 10, 2011, Boyland was charged with bribery by Manhattan federal prosecutors for soliciting bribes from a health care organization. He was acquitted earlier this month.
But, according to the complaint, on around March 11, Boyland was meeting with the undercover agents in Manhattan to propose other potential real estate development projects in his district that he thought might interest them. On or around March 22, a staffer for Boyland called the first undercover agent “and told him that the reason Boyland had been calling [the agent] was to ask for $7,000 in cash to pay for legal fees,” which the complaint alleges was in exchange for his wielding his political influence. Boyland later told the same agent that he had to “solidify some attorneys.”
“You know, I’m the politician,” Boyland said, according to the complaint. “I’m the guy who can make that move over on this end, so we know the folks that can pull the sort of triggers we’re looking for.”
The complaint also alleges that in April, Boyland solicited a $250,000 bribe from the agents for a plan in which they would buy a shuttered hospital in his district, get state funds to renovate it, then re-sell it to a non-profit Boyland claimed he controlled.
“I got a middle guy by the way. . . . I gotta stay clean . . . I got a bag man,” Boyland said, according to the complaint.
