Metro

Sen. John Sampson’s ex-aide busted for fraud, tax crimes

A former top aide to indicted state Sen. John Sampson has been busted on a range of fraud and tax crimes – including charges he bilked the New York Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee out of $100,000, federal authorities announced Tuesday.

Melvin Lowe, 52, scammed the cash out of the DSCC in 2010 by getting a printer to send the committee a fake bill and then forward most of the cash on to him, according to federal prosecutors.

Lowe is a powerful political consultant who worked as a lobbyist for Brooklyn mega-developer Forest City Ratner and on Andrew Cuomo’s unsuccessful 2002 campaign for governor.

The shady insider also failed to report over $2 million in consulting income on his taxes, got his bank to make a false statement to his mortgage lender, and defrauded a Yonkers resident of $66,000, according to the criminal complaint filed against him.

Sampson – who paid Lowe $150,000 out of his campaign chest in 2009-‘10 – was charged in May with embezzling $440,000 from foreclosure escrow accounts he managed as well as witness and evidence tampering.

Lowe was also one of the eight Democratic elected officials and staffers secretly taped by disgraced ex-state Sen. Shirley Huntley, who was sentenced to one year behind bars for her own fraud conviction.

Lowe appeared in White Plains federal court Tuesday and was released on a $200,000 bond.