ANDY’S EX-AIDE SPRUNG
Two-year jail break
A crooked former aide to ex-Gov. Andrew Cuomo was quietly released from prison — more than two years before his sentence was set to expire.
Joseph Percoco — who was serving time at an upstate lockup — has been transferred to an unspecified halfway house, the federal Residential Reentry Management office in Brooklyn said on Tuesday.
The RRM declined to comment further and it’s unclear why Percoco (inset) was sprung early.
His six-year sentence for pocketing more than $300,000 in two “pay-toplay” corruption schemes was set to run until April 22, 2024, according to the US Bureau of Prisons Web site.
Under federal law, inmates are eligible to spend up to 12 months in a halfway house before being released from custody.
The Albany Times Union first reported that the BOP Web site no longer listed Percoco as imprisoned.
Percoco, 53, is a former Cuomo family loyalist who worked for the late Gov. Mario Cuomo before also working for eldest son Andrew. During Andrew’s eulogy at his father’s 2015 funeral, he likened Percoco to a brother, calling him “my father’s third son, who I sometimes think he loved the most.”
Earlier this year, it was revealed that one of Andrew’s sisters, Madeline Cuomo, and former state Democratic Party chief John Marino, secretly raised money to help Percoco appeal his conviction, which was upheld in September.
Recently released testimony from the sexual-harassment probe that led Andrew Cuomo to resign in August also showed that he once taunted an aide, Andrew Ball, by saying things like, “Joe Percoco did your job better.”
Last year, Percoco sought compassionate release to home confinement after he claimed his health problems, including diabetes and hypertension, put him at “extreme risk” if he contracted COVID-19 at the minimumsecurity federal prison in upstate Otisville, NY.
But the request was denied by Manhattan federal Judge Valerie Caproni and upheld by the Second Circuit Court of Appeals in Manhattan. Percoco was convicted on three corruption-related charges but cleared of three others in 2018, following a seven-week trial during which the prosecution’s star witness — former lobbyist and admitted co-conspirator Todd Howe — was locked up midway through his testimony.
Howe was jailed for six months for allegedly trying to scam his way out of paying for a room at The WaldorfAstoria hotel, but that case was dropped and he was sentenced to five years of probation for crimes including conspiracy to commit honestservices fraud and conspiracy to commit extortion.