A former Democratic Congressman from Philadelphia who was expelled from Congress in 1980 for his involvement in the Abscam bribery scandal has been convicted of bribing elections officials to pad the vote counts of his campaign advisory clients, NBC News reports.
Michael J. “Ozzie” Myers, the one-time representative for Pennsylvania’s 1st Congressional District, was sentenced to 2 1/2 years in prison for bribing elections staffers. City officials were adamant to point out that the winners of the elections were not changed in the scheme; only the margins of victory in the final counts were altered. The vast majority of races affected by the bribes were judgeships in the city of Philadelphia.
Myers served in Congress from 1976 to 1980, before he was expelled by a 376-30 vote in October 1980 after being caught on hidden camera accepting a bribe from undercover FBI agents posing as Arab investors. On tape, Myers told the faux-investors “money talks in this business and bullshit walks.”