Agents from the Internal Revenue Service and investigators from the United States attorney’s office in Manhattan took the consultant, Melvin E. Lowe, into custody at an apartment in Harlem about 7:15 a.m. A nine-count criminal complaint unsealed in United States District Court in White Plains laid out what prosecutors charged were five separate criminal schemes.
Mr. Lowe, 52, who was among a long list of “outstanding and dedicated colleagues and volunteers” thanked by Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo in the acknowledgments of his 2003 book, “Crossroads,” was expected to appear before a United States magistrate judge, Paul E. Davison, later Tuesday.
The charges include wire fraud, bank fraud and criminal tax violations. Mr. Lowe’s lawyer could not immediately be reached for comment.
The complaint says, among other things, that Mr. Lowe had failed to report more than $ 2 million in consulting income and used a false-invoice scheme to defraud the Democratic Senate Campaign Committee, as well as those who contributed to it, of $ 100,000.
As part of the scheme, the complaint charges, he directed a vendor to submit a false invoice for printing to the campaign committee, and then to redirect $ 75,000 of the committee’s payment for those nonexistent printing services to Lowe and $ 20,000 to a political consultant, identified in the complaint only as Political Consultant No. 1.
The complaint says the $ 20,000 payment to the unnamed consultant was made days after a state senator, identified in the complaint only as Senator No. 1, promised to pay the consultant for assistance the consultant had already provided to the senator.
The complaint, sworn out by Special Agent Timothy J. Ryan of the Internal Revenue Service, said the consultant had told him he did not know the vendor, had done no work for the vendor and was owed no money from the political campaign committee.
The complaint says Mr. Lowe gave $ 5,000 of the $ 75,000 sent to him by the vendor to a member of a community board in Manhattan and spent the balance on the installation of a swimming pool and other renovations at his second home, in Georgia.
If convicted, Mr. Lowe faces a maximum of 20 years in prison for wire fraud; 30 years for bank fraud; three years for each of the three counts of subscribing to false tax returns; and a year for each of the three counts charging him with failure to file a tax return, though his recommended sentence under the federal sentencing guidelines would most likely be significantly less.
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