Ex-hospital exec gets 3 years in NY bribery scheme

May 8, 2012 Brooklyn Eagle Staff

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NEW YORK (AP) — A former hospital executive was sentenced Monday to three years in prison for engaging in a scheme to bribe three state legislators, including Brooklyn's Assemblyman William Boyland Jr. and the disgraced former state Sen. Carl Kruger.

U.S. District Judge Jed Rakoff in Manhattan said some prison time was necessary for David Rosen because of a "glaring and rather tawdry truth: that Mr. Rosen over a period of many years knowingly and intentionally bribed one upstate legislator after another."

The sentence was considerably less than the 10 years in prison recommended by the federal probation department. A defense lawyer had asked that Rosen be permitted to perform community service in lieu of prison. Rosen was convicted last year at a bench trial; he's been told to surrender Aug. 8.

Rosen asked for leniency, saying he was proud of his accomplishments as he tried to bring health care to those who couldn't afford it in Queens and Brooklyn. He recited the highlights of a career in health care that began when he was hired out of college in 1970.

The judge agreed that Rosen was "a good man in many respects."

He said the people of New York City had "benefited from his efforts to enhance health care in those communities."

During the three-week trial, prosecutors said Rosen launched a pattern of criminal conduct to protect and enlarge an empire of medical facilities he acquired after he rescued Jamaica Hospital from bankruptcy in the late 1970s at age 27, becoming its CEO.

Prosecutors said the dilapidated 286-bed hospital was salvaged in the mid-1980s with financial assistance from the state Legislature. They said Rosen in the last 10 years alone has made more than $15 million running hospitals and health care facilities known as the MediSys Health Network.

The government said he first made an ally of former New York State Assemblyman Anthony Seminerio, a Democrat, paying him $400,000 in consulting fees from 1999 to 2008 to help steer government money Rosen's way, including $19 million in loan forgiveness in 2006. Seminerio died in prison, where he was serving a sentence since his 2009 conviction for defrauding his Queens constituents of honest services.

Prosecutors said Rosen later recruited state Assemblyman William Boyland Jr., paying him $175,000 from 2003 through 2008 to serve as a consultant at a hospital's family care center. The government alleged Boyland did little or no legitimate consulting work. A Manhattan jury last year found him not guilty of charges he took a no-show job in exchange for doing political favors for Rosen.

Boyland, a Brooklyn Democrat, has pleaded not guilty to unrelated charges in Brooklyn federal court that he solicited bribes in exchange for obtaining permits and leases for a promoter who was cooperating in a corruption probe.

Rosen was also convicted of bribing Democratic state Sen. Carl Kruger in 2007 and 2008 by directing hospital business to a hospice care center promoted by Kruger. Kruger, the one-time chairman of New York state's powerful Senate Finance Committee, was sentenced last month to seven years in prison after he pleaded guilty in the case.