Ex-Nassau Executive Edward Mangano's corruption case: Appeals court reverses 2 counts

A federal appeals court on Thursday reversed part of former Nassau County Executive Edward Mangano's corruption conviction, siding with Mangano's contention that he couldn't be convicted of bribery charges in connection with the Town of Oyster Bay's indirect backing of $20 million in loans because he was not an Oyster Bay Town official.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second District reversed Mangano's felony conviction on two counts — federal programs bribery and conspiracy to commit federal programs bribery — which will prompt the trial judge to resentence Mangano, the Thursday ruling said.

In the 92-page ruling, the appeals court said it agreed with the former county executive "that the evidence was insufficient" to convict him of those two charges.

Mangano, 62, who is currently in a federal prison in Massachusetts, began serving a 12-year sentence in 2022. He is scheduled to be released from prison Dec. 4, 2031, according to the Bureau of Prisons inmate locator.

The other felony charges against Mangano and his wife, Linda Mangano, were affirmed, the ruling said.

Mangano was convicted in 2019 by a jury of conspiracy to commit federal program bribery, federal program bribery, conspiracy to commit honest services wire fraud, honest services wire fraud and conspiracy to obstruct justice for directing Oyster Bay Town officials to indirectly back what amounted to $20 million in loans for restaurateur and town concessionaire Harendra Singh after an outside lawyer for the town said such a transaction was illegal.

Linda Mangano was convicted of two counts of lying to the FBI, conspiring to obstruct justice and obstruction of justice in a case involving the politically connected Singh, who was also a longtime Mangano family friend.

Kevin Keating, Mangano's trial attorney, said in text message Thursday: "Our three month trial in 2018 ended in a mistrial with the jury unable to convict on a single count after 9 days of deliberation. Our two month trial in 2019 resulted in a narrow conviction as the jury found Ed not guilty of all counts related to Nassau County matters. Today, the Circuit Court further narrowed his conviction in holding, as we had argued, that the federal program bribery charge was legally flawed."

A spokesman for the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Eastern District of New York said the government will ask the court to reimpose the 12-year sentence Mangano is serving on his convictions for honest services fraud and conspiracy to obstruct justice.

"The United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit reaffirmed what a federal jury concluded nearly five years ago: Edward and Linda Mangano created, fostered, and benefited from a culture of corruption in the government of Nassau County," the spokesperson said. "In a pair of decisions, the Court of Appeals broadly rejected the defendants’ attempts to avoid responsibility for their criminal conduct. Most notably, the court upheld Edward Mangano’s convictions for honest services fraud, finding that the evidence at his 2019 trial was sufficient to prove his orchestration of an illegal scheme to force the Town of Oyster Bay to guarantee certain loans." 

The spokesperson said the court overruled the federal programs bribery convictions "on narrow legal ground." It found "not that the government failed to prove his role in the corruption, but only that he was not an 'agent' of the Town of Oyster Bay, as the law requires," the spokesperson said.

Linda Mangano's appeals attorney, Bradley Simon, declined to comment when reached by email Thursday.

The appeals court agreed with Mangano, a Republican, that he was not "an agent" of the town — a point the government conceded, the court said — a requirement of the statute.

"The government presented no evidence at trial that Mangano had authority to act on behalf of the Town, nor that he was an employee or representative of the town," the decision said.

"He contends, in particular, that the government failed to prove that he was an agent of the Town or Oyster Bay, precluding his conviction as a principal on Count Two, which charges federal programs bribery. He further contends that the evidence was insufficient to show that he aided and abetted others in connection with the scheme alleged in Count Two, or that he was properly convicted for conspiring to commit federal programs bribery, as charged in Count One.

"The government presented no evidence at trial that anyone other than Mangano and Singh, neither of whom were agents of the Town, were part of an agreement to influence the Town's business for the benefit of Mangano," the decision read. 

The appeals court also rejected a claim that Mangano was convicted based on conduct that was not an "official act" of an elected official, as defined by prior Supreme Court decisions. But the appeals court said the Supreme Court has recognized that using an official position "to exert pressure on another official to perform an 'official act'" can qualify.

"Here, Mangano pressured [Oyster Bay Town Supervisor John] Venditto and [Town Attorney Leonard] Genova to perform the official act of passing a vaguely worded Town resolution that supplied apparent legal cover for the illegal guarantees Singh needed," the appeals court wrote. "Further, to claim that Mangano merely provided advice to Town officials would grossly understate his role in orchestrating the loans scheme."

The appeals court also rejected a defense bid for reversal based on prosecutorial misconduct.

Mangano's lawyers had argued that prosecutors "committed reversible misconduct" during the rebuttal summation when it made "ad hominem attacks on Mangano's attorney and improperly suggested that the defense had a burden of proof."

The government had referred to Keating, Mangano's trial attorney, as "crafty" and said he "has a job to do," court papers said.

Mangano also said the government had attempted to shift the burden of proof to the defense when a prosecutor said to the jury: "You know what is revealing? The question he didn't ask."

The court called Mangano's arguments "meritless."

"Even if we were to agree that the statements in this case were inappropriate, and we do not, they were plainly not severe enough to merit reversal," the judges wrote.

The court also rejected Mangano's appeals attorney's motion for a new trial based on new evidence — a posttrial deposition in an unrelated civil case in which Singh said he pleaded guilty to bribing Mangano for "'county' actions that 'had nothing to do with the Town or Oyster Bay,'" the decision said.

"We are not persuaded that Singh's statements in an unrelated deposition would have probably led to Mangano's acquittal," said the appeals court decision, which also cited the district court's rejection of the argument that Singh committed perjury. "We discern no reason to disturb its conclusion that Singh did not commit perjury during trial."

The panel also rejected Linda Mangano's arguments that her sentence was "procedurally unreasonable" because she received a sentencing enhancement "because her actions caused the government to conduct additional investigations and to call an additional 14 witnesses at trial."

 The appeals court concluded: "The government's brief on appeal highlights at least six witnesses it was required to call to disprove specific lies that Linda told after having been subpoenaed for her testimony. Thus, the district court's funding was amply supported by the record evidence and was not clearly erroneous." 

The jury in 2019 found Singh bribed Mangano with a $454,000 "no-show" job for his wife in his restaurant empire, free meals and vacations, two luxury chairs, hardwood flooring for the couple’s bedroom and a $7,300 wristwatch for one of their sons.

Singh put Linda Mangano on his payroll in April 2010 before Oyster Bay officials that June voted to authorize backing of loans for Singh to fund capital improvements at a town golf course catering hall in Woodbury and at Tobay Beach, where he ran concessions, evidence showed.

The Manganos said at trial the bribes were only gifts from their longtime family friend.

Linda Mangano was sentenced to 15 months in prison but was released to home confinement after about 4 months at a federal prison in Connecticut.

By Nicole Fuller

nicole.fuller@newsday.com@NicoleFuller

Nicole Fuller is Newsday's senior criminal justice reporter. She began working at Newsday in 2012 and previously covered local government.