Cohoes mayor indicted
Feds say Morse lied to FBI, embezzled campaign donations
Cohoes Mayor Shawn Morse was arrested Thursday on a federal indictment that alleges he had conspired with his former campaign treasurer to use thousands of dollars in political donations for personal expenditures, including vacations and home repairs.
The seven-count felony indictment, which lists charges of wire fraud and conspiracy to commit wire fraud, also charged Morse with the crime of lying to FBI agents when they questioned him about the cash withdrawals last September.
Morse, 51, was taken into custody by FBI agents at his Cohoes residence early Thursday morning. In the afternoon, two special agents escorted him — not in handcuffs — into U.S. District Court, where Magistrate Judge Christian Hummel ordered Morse released on his own recognizance after his attorney, William Dreyer, entered a plea of not guilty.
Morse’s longtime former campaign treasurer and confidant, Ralph Signoracci, is named in the indictment as a co-conspirator. Sources close to the case said that Signoracci has been offered a plea agreement by the government, in exchange for his cooperation, and is expected to plead guilty as early as next week.
Under the top charge, Morse could face a maximum sentence of up to 20 years in prison, although federal sentencing guidelines make it unlikely that he would face the maximum penalty if convicted.
Morse’s father and brother waited for him outside the courthouse after the brief proceeding and he jumped into their vehicle
and drove away without commenting. Dreyer declined to comment as he left the courthouse ahead of Morse.
A short time later, Morse posted a statement on Facebook: “This is my one and only statement. Thank you for all the love and support! This is the last hurdle we face. I am confident this will be over soon and we will finally have this all behind us.”
The arrest of Morse, a Democrat and former city firefighter who was elected mayor in 2015, follows a tumultuous two years in which he has faced multiple criminal investigations for allegations of domestic abuse. Those probes, by the State Police, Albany County Sheriff’s Department and Colonie police, did not result in any charges.
The FBI revealed its unrelated investigation of Morse last September, when agents visited the mayor at his Grandview Avenue residence at 6 a.m. and questioned him about his vacations, which have included a Caribbean cruise, and other matters related to his use of campaign funds.
The same morning that Morse was first confronted by the FBI, federal agents also knocked on the door of Signoracci, who was served with a federal grand jury subpoena directing him to turn over records of the mayor’s campaign accounts to the U.S. attorney’s office in Albany.
According to Thursday’s indictment, Signoracci allegedly cashed numerous checks from Morse’s campaign account and gave the mayor amounts ranging from several hundred dollars to $5,000.
The indictment’s five wire fraud counts allege that Morse, with Signoracci’s assistance, filed false entries with the state Board of Elections between August 2015 and January 2018 regarding campaign expenditures in amounts of $500, $5,000, $2,250, $3,000, and $1,500.
“The purpose of the scheme ... was for the defendant to enrich himself by embezzling, misappropriating, and converting to his personal use campaign contributions intended for his mayoral campaign committee and political action committee, without the authorization or knowledge of the contributors,” the indictment states.
The indictment indicates the alleged scheme took place between November 2013 and September 2018. In August 2015 and April 2017, Signoracci gave Morse cash payments of $5,000 and $3,000, respectively, that Morse used to take vacations, the indictment states.
Signoracci has met with federal authorities multiple times and has turned over campaign finance records dating back years.
In the wake of being questioned by the FBI last September, Signoracci resigned from his position as a county legislator and also left his job as the director of operations for the city of Cohoes. He now works in the Albany County comptroller’s office. His attorney, James E. Long, has declined to comment.
Morse’s campaign filings indicate there had been multiple entries — ranging from $250 to $5,000 — in which Signoracci wrote checks to himself from Morse’s campaign accounts for “professional” expenses.
Many of the checks were cashed around times when Morse went on vacations.
Another campaign account that had been used by Morse was titled “The Chairman’s PAC.” Records indicate Morse set up that account when he was chairman of the Albany County Legislature. At one time, the political fund held more than $10,000, but the most recent filing indicated there is no longer money in the account.
The federal probe also had examined Morse’s time and attendance after he was hired in February 2018 as a part-time security officer at the Glenmont Job Corps, a federally subsidized jobtraining facility, according to two people briefed on the investigation.
In August, investigators with the U.S. Department of Labor’s Office of Inspector General visited the Glenmont facility, where they reviewed documentation and interviewed the former security manager, Patrick Thomas, who no longer works there. They were probing whether Morse was paid for working when he was not at the facility, according to one of the people with knowledge of the investigation.
Morse and Thomas are friends and have vacationed together, according to people who know them.
Morse had also made inquiries in Cohoes about whether Thomas, who is a part-time police officer in the village of Altamont, could get a job with the Cohoes police force. But a person with knowledge of the mayor’s efforts said that Thomas, 47, did not qualify to take a police officer civil service exam due to his age.
There are no charges in the indictment related to Morse’s work at Glenmont Job Corps, where he was hired after he had been placed on leave from his job as a labor relations representative for the United Public Services Employees Union.
Morse, who no longer works for the union, had initially been placed on leave from the union job after his wife, Brenda, called 911 in November 2017 and told a dispatcher her husband had grabbed her by the neck and thrown her to the ground, choking her.
Morse has denied he choked his wife and has not been charged in that or other alleged domestic violence incidents.
The State Police had also probed allegations made by Morse’s 16-yearold daughter that he physically abused her, including choking her and punching her in the head.
Colonie police recently said they had closed their investigation into a complaint by Morse’s wife that he had grabbed her and spit on her during a dispute at a Wolf Road restaurant last year. Colonie police said they could not sustain the allegations and discovered “inconsistencies” in her account.
Morse’s arrest on federal criminal charges comes as he is up for re-election and facing challenges from three city residents who have launched campaigns for the Democratic primary. The mayor gave no indication in his written statement on Thursday that he intends to abandon his campaign.
Citing multiple interviews and Family Court records, the Times Union has reported over the past year on allegations of violence by Morse, including some that reach back decades. Multiple women, including his wife and youngest daughter, had accused him of choking them in addition to other acts of physical violence.
Colleen Keller, a former girlfriend, went public in 2017 — in the wake of the 911 call by Morse’s wife — and said that Morse had repeatedly abused her in the 1990s, including an incident in which he grabbed her by the throat and lifted her off the ground. She said Cohoes police refused to arrest Morse when she called them for help.
Law enforcement officials briefed on the domestic violence investigations said that they did not pursue charges, in part, because Brenda Morse had at times told others that she had made up the allegations. She told investigators that her husband convinced her to issue the statements recanting her allegations and that she agreed to do it to protect him.
Before becoming mayor in the city where he grew up, Morse was chairman of the Albany County Legislature and had been an imposing figure in the county’s Democratic machine. He was employed as a Cohoes firefighter from 1989 to 2015.
Multiple political leaders, most of them fellow Democrats, including Gov. Andrew Cuomo and Albany County Executive Daniel Mccoy, had called on Morse to resign after the domestic abuse allegations surfaced. He refused to leave and recently announced his campaign for a second term.
Tom Scarff, Morse’s new campaign manager, attended Thursday’s court proceeding and told reporters outside the courthouse that the officials who had called on Morse to resign “now look foolish.” He claimed that police determined the allegations were “unfounded.”
“He’s a fighter,” Scarff said. “He’s ... extremely effective as a mayor and as (former) chairman of the Legislature, and he has worked for the people of the city of Cohoes continuously through all of this turmoil that he’s going through.
“It might be sort of a relief, because now we know exactly where we stand and what the allegations, what the charges are,” Scarff added. “For the last year he hasn’t known if he was going to be arrested for battery or arrested for child abuse or anything.”
He’s a fighter. He’s ... extremely effective as a mayor and as (former) chairman of the Legislature, and he has worked for the people of the city of cohoes continuously through all of this turmoil that he’s going through.”
Tom Scarff, Cohoes Mayor Shawn Morse’s campaign manager