Metro

Haggerty sent to prison for 1 and 1/3 years for Bloomberg campaign cash theft

Disgraced political consultant John Haggerty — described by his own lawyer as broke, divorced and dishonored — was sentenced this morning to serve at least one and one-third years — and as much as four years — in prison for stealing hundreds of thousands of dollars in campaign cash from Mayor Bloomberg.

The sentence was handed down by Manhattan Supreme Court Justice Ronald Zweibel, and immediately enacted, with Haggerty being cuffed and led away to a back holding cell for processing. The sentence covers Haggerty’s October conviction for money laundering and second degree grand larceny.

The prison term came despite a quavery-voiced statement to the judge by Haggerty himself, in which he bemoaned not being able to go back in time to change his own behavior.

“Today my reputation is destroyed,” he said. “I can promise you I will devote the rest of my life to being a productive and law-abiding member of the city and state,” he said.

Bloomberg himself did not weigh in on the sentencing in the embarrassing case, either by attending today’s proceeding or by submitting any kind of statement to the court.

Haggerty’s lengthy trial had included testimony by the mayor and some of his top advisors, and become an eyebrow-raising public display of just how little oversight the mayor and his staff maintained as millions of his dollars moved in and out of accounts.

The lack of victim participation was so odd in a major larceny case, that one of Haggerty’s lawyers, Dennis Vacco, used it as an argument for a lesser sentence.

“The victim of a $1.1 million larceny doesn’t even show up in the courtroom,” Vacco told the judge. “The victim isn’t saying a word. The victim isn’t asking for incarceration.

“This is an exceedingly unusual case, your honor” Vacco added. “And it demands an unusual sentence.”

Haggerty had faced a maximum of 15 years today in the audacious swindle, in which he promised the mayor that he’d conduct a massive election day 2009 ballot security operation that never materialized.

Haggerty had been acquitted in October of the top grand larceny charge, which had alleged that he actually stole $1.1 million — the total amount the mayor had paid for ballot security via a donation to the state Independence Party.

But jurors ultimately had found him guilty only of pocketing $800,000, most of which he used to purchase his childhood home in Forrest Hills, Queens. Haggerty must now sell that home within six months and forfeit the money as restitution.

“He has suffered,” another Haggerty lawyer, Raymond Castello, told the judge, noting that Haggerty has lost his reputation, his savings and inheritance and is soon to lose that very childhood home — where he lives estranged from pretty much everyone else in his family besides his brother, Bart.

Haggerty’s mother died when he was 15, and he was never close to his father, Jack, an Albany insider who died in 2008. The son had pitiably been seeking “a real connection to a life gone by,” Vacco said.

“The house clouded his judgment,” Vacco added. “The house clouded his vision,” Vacco, the former state Attorney General, told the judge. “It was about the house, not the greed.”

“I can’t speak to the emotional drive that would leave another integretous, honest, trusted person to do foolish things out of emotion…He was desperate to hang on to a semblance of family,” Vacco said.

Lead prosecutor Eric Seidel said he was unmoved by these arguments.

“You want to buy that house, because of whatever emotional attraction it had? Go to the bank and get a mortgage,” Seidel said. “You don’t have to steal that money and you don’t have to launder that money. That’s an excuse.”

Haggerty’s now-ex-wife, state liquor authority commissioner Noreen Healey, did not attend the sentencing or the trial, at which Haggerty’s ex-mistress campaign aide was forced to bear cringe-inducing testimony against him. But Haggerty’s lawyer read aloud from Healey’s letter of support to the judge.

“She is speaking from the heart as I am,” Vacco said. “She knows… that his reputation and losing that house are more devastating to him than a hundred years prison.

“His reputation is in shambles,” said Vacco.

Prosecutors had called Haggerty “calculated” and “remorseless” and asked for nearly the maximum sentence — at least four years and as much as 12 years.

“He manipulated not only the people he took the money from, which included the Independence Party, but he continued to make misrepresentations that he didn’t get any money from this,” Seidel said.

“Haggerty’s fraudulent and cynical misconduct has now been punished, and his ill-gotten gains forfeited,” said District Attorney Vance, whose office prosecuted Haggerty. “This Office is committed to using every tool at its disposal, including robust enforcement of the asset forfeiture laws, to ensure that crime does not pay.”