Do You Remember Thomas Kontogiannis, The Republican Crook Who Paid Duke Cunningham $400,000 To Get Him A Presidential Pardon From Bush?

In the late 70s I was so smitten by the energy and revolutionary zeal of punk rock that I decided to start a magazine. Some friends at Warner Bros gave me so advice. In defining ourselves-- as well as a new genre-- we'd have to not just talk up the music and artists we loved, like the Clash, Ramones, Talking Heads, Pistols and Buzzcocks but also differentiate them by blasting away at the worst of the "old wave." I picked all the easy targets: Journey, Foreigner, REO Speedwagon, Styx, Kansas...

Almost 3 decades later I started DownWithTyranny and I still remembered their advice. In place of Journey, Foreigner, REO Speedwagon and Styx we had Duke Cunningham, Bob Ney, Jack Abramoff and Thomas Kontogiannis. (Kansas was replaced by... well, Kansas, of course.) We eagerly reported on all their crimes and eventually all 4 were sentenced to prison, to be replaced by equally horrible characters, from Karl Rove, Scooter Libby, Jerry Lewis and Mean Jean Schmidt to more recent demons like Michele Bachmann, Jeffereson Beauregard Sessions III, Virginia Foxx and Paul Ryan.

Anyway, this morning I was surprised when I noticed a large number of Germans on the site, having come by way of the German Wall Street Journal pointing to DWT as a place to read about Thomas Kontogiannis. I was busy with President Obama's speech in Cairo and didn't pay it much mind. At least not until this evening when I came across a Reuters story, Nine accused of $92 million U.S. mortgage fraud scheme.

Staring in July of 2005 we did a couple dozen posts mentioning Kontogiannis, all of them mentioning that he is a Republican criminal of the first order tied with the sleaziest politicians in our system. What first attracted me to his story was how he paid Duke Cunningham $400,000 as a middleman to buy him a presidential pardon from George W. Bush. It always amazed me that the Justice Department never followed up on that. It wasn't til a few years later that we learned exactly what the Bush Justice Department had turned into.

Just when it looked like things couldn't get any worse for San Diego suburban congressman/right-wing lunatic/bribe-taker Randy "Duke" Cunningham, up pops convicted felon and Cunningham "business associate" Thomas Kontogiannis. At least in this case Cunningham wasn't arranging no-bid contracts for his criminal pal to sell military equipment to the Pentagon (like in the other case he's involved with). In this case Cunningham was peddling a pardon from his pal George Bush to a crook who cheated the NYC public school system. In October, 2002 the Congressman's bud Kontogiannis (of whom Cunningham's sleazy lawyer said "Duke's business dealings with Mr. Kontogiannis have been entirely proper and any suggestion to the contrary is simply false") pleaded guilty in a bid-rigging, bribe and kickback scheme. Sounds like he and "Duke" were made for eachother. And he bought ole "Duke's" crappy old boat-- worth $200,000 tops-- for $600,000. Is that a great way to pay someone off with a $400,000 bribe or what? This seems to be ole "Duke's" modus operandi. Oh, and Kontogiannis arranged for the financing of "Duke's" $2.5 mansion. No one has indicated whether or not Bush was in on the scheme and if he was getting any of the cash in return for the upcoming pardon.

It got worse from there and even included unproved treason allegations featuring a secretive trip to Saudi Arabia with Cunningham, another GOP crook, Ken Calvert, and Ziyad S. Abduljawad, a naturalized American of Saudi origin living in San Diego. In mid-2007 Kontogiannis pleaded guilt to some bribery charges involving Cunningham. Exactly one year ago he was sentenced to 8 years in prison and fined a million dollars. Read the 42 comments at the post announcing that.

I guess we all had reason to believe that Kongtogiannis had left the national stage, right? I mean, he's in prison. But yesterday he was back in the papers, along with 8 others indicted on charges of conspiring to defraud Washington Mutual Bank and Credit Suisse in a $92 million mortgage fraud scheme. Kontogiannis was the leader of the pack.

Thomas Kontogiannis and eight others are accused of using staged sales, straw buyers and inflated appraisals on two tracts of land in East New York and Queens to defraud Washington Mutual Bank and DLJ Capital, a Credit Suisse subsidiary.

The scheme unfolded between 2001 and 2003, according to a release issued by Brooklyn acting U.S. Attorney Benton Campbell.

Kontogiannis, 60, is serving an eight-year federal prison sentence for laundering bribes paid to former Rep. Randy "Duke" Cunningham (R-Calif.).

He also pleaded guilty in 2002 to being part of a bid-rigging and bribery scheme involving New York City Board of Education computer contracts in Queens.

Other defendants in Thursday's case include John Michael, Elias Apergis, Steven Martini, Nadia Konstantinadou, Stefan Delgiannis, Ted Doumazios, Edward Hogan and Jonathan Rubin.

The North Country Gazette has the most detailed coverage and points out that Kontogiannis could get 30 years added to his 8 year sentence. He's still got $50 million in property and that could be subject to forfeiture.