Linda Mangano Released from Prison Amid 15-Month Corruption Sentence
Linda Mangano, the wife of former Nassau County Executive Ed Mangano, was released from prison last month amid a 15-month sentence, according to reports.
The Manganos were both sentenced on corruption charges in April 2022 – Ed, 60, for 12 years, and Linda, 59, for 15 months. It is unclear why Linda was released. She will carry out the rest of her sentence in community confinement.
Breon Peace, United States Attorney for the Eastern District of New York, and Michael J. Driscoll, Assistant Director-in-Charge, FBI, New York Field Office (FBI), initially announced the couple’s sentences, which included a $20,000 fine for the former county executive, on April 14, 2022.
“[Ed Mangano] gave Nassau residents widespread corruption and dishonesty instead of truth and integrity. Linda Mangano took affirmative steps to mislead a federal investigation to keep her husband in power and to maintain their way of life,” Peace had said.
A jury had convicted the disgraced Republican lawmaker of accepting bribes and kickbacks in exchange for official government action, but acquitted him of extortion and honest services wire fraud, following a trial in 2019 at Central Islip federal court. Linda was convicted of lying to investigators. They were both convicted of conspiracy to obstruct justice.
Prosecutors said the ex-county exec awarded government contracts to restaurateur Harendra Singh, his former friend, in exchange for giving Mangano’s wife a $100,000-a-year no-show job, vacations, an expensive watch, furniture and hardwood flooring for his house.
The conviction followed a retrial after the couple’s first case ended in a mistrial in 2018 following nine days of jury deliberations and a three-month-long trial in which their codefendant, former Oyster Bay Town Supervisor John Venditto, a fellow Republican, was acquitted of charges he improperly backed a private company’s loans with taxpayer money. Although cleared in federal court, Venditto pleaded guilty to corruption charges in Nassau County court a year before he died in 2020.
-With Timothy Bolger
