‘SEE YOU SOON’: Leslie Morris weeps as her handcuffed husband, Hank Morris, is led away yesterday by court officers, who denied him a chance to hug her goodbye. (Steven Hirsch)
Disgraced political consultant Hank Morris was frog-marched off to jail yesterday without so much as a kiss goodbye from his bawling wife as a judge sentenced him to up to four years for orchestrating a $19 million kickback scheme involving the state’s strained-to-the-breaking-point pension fund.
The bailiffs guarding Morris, who last year pleaded guilty to masterminding the influence-peddling scheme, pointedly denied his request for a final embrace with his near-hysterical wife, Leslie Morris.
“I love you. I love everybody. I’ll see you soon,” Hank Morris, almost blubbering himself, shouted to his wife and family before he was hauled off in handcuffs to start his 1 1/3- to four-year sentence.
Two rows packed with Morris family members and supporters wept as the former top aide to disgraced state Comptroller Alan Hevesi was led away.
His attorney’s last-ditch plea for an extra week of freedom had also been denied.
“No. It’s time to go. You’re remanded,” barked Manhattan Supreme Court Judge Lewis Bart Stone, rejecting Morris’ plea for time to get his affairs in order.
Morris, 57, pleaded guilty last November to securities fraud, admitting that he used his political connections to squeeze millions of dollars in payouts from financial firms looking for a piece of the state’s $125 billion pension fund in a classic “pay-to-play” scheme.
Firms that refused to pay the bribes found it near impossible to do business with the pension fund, investigators found.
“I’m sorry if I let you down,” Morris told the judge before he was sentenced. “Simply put, my actions undermined the integrity of New York state and, more importantly, made [the public] question their faith in government . . . For too long, I was blind.
“Words cannot express my remorse.”
Among the prominent money managers who played along with Morris’ scheme was Steven Rattner, the Wall Street financier who led President Obama’s restructuring of the auto industry and who also served as an investment adviser to Mayor Bloomberg. Rattner ended up settling a civil suit from the state for $16.2 million.
A total of $170 million in civil penalties were paid by financial firms, including politically connected companies like the Carlyle Group.
Eight people so far have pleaded guilty to criminal charges from the case.
In a series of articles, The Post uncovered much of Morris’ funny business starting in 2007, including how payoffs continued even under the administration of Hevesi’s successor, Thomas DiNapoli. Then-Attorney General Andrew Cuomo later cleared DiNapoli of any wrongdoing.
Last October, Hevesi, who is barred from ever holding public office again for misusing state chauffeurs, admitted to taking $1 million in gifts from scheme. He, too, faces up to four years in prison when he is sentenced next month.
As part of a plea deal, Morris agreed to forfeit $19 million he took in kickbacks from firms looking for state business.
Morris, who operated his scam from his Greenwich, Conn., firm, Searle & Co., is also permanently banned from the securities industry in New York and permanently lost his law license.
“The sentencing of Hank Morris serves as a strong signal that it’s time to clean up Albany and the culture of corruption must and will end,” said Gov. Cuomo, who launched the investigation into the scheme when he was attorney general.
“The pay-to-play, special-interest culture is always unethical and often illegal. Morris claimed that his actions were business as usual in Albany. Let that serve as a warning.”
Attorney General Eric Schneiderman, who inherited the case from Cuomo, added that those “who abuse positions of power to line their own pockets will be held accountable by this office.”
DiNapoli said placement agents are now banned “so that that corrupt middlemen could never again run the type of pay-to-play scheme that Mr. Morris did.”
Had Morris not taken the plea and instead been convicted of the top charge he was indicted on in 2009 — enterprise corruption — he would have faced a maximum of 8 1/3 to 25 years in prison.
His criminal-defense attorney, William Schwartz, had argued for probation or community service.
“Life as he knows it is over. A message has been sent,” Schwartz said.
But the judge disagreed.
“While it is not likely that Morris will do it again in the future, a criminal sentence must consider more than that,” he said.