Operation Greylord in Chicago used honest judges and lawyers posing as crooked ones; 92 officials were indicted, including 17 judges, and nearly all were convicted. [1] South Carolina’s Operation Lost Trust in 1990 used a lobbyist working with the FBI to pay legislators over a betting bill.
Tennessee Waltz (2005) was ABSCAM with a different costume: FBI agents set up a fake electronics company and paid legislators to help it. A dozen state and local officials were convicted or pleaded guilty. [2] New Jersey’s Bid Rig (2009) charged 44 people, including the mayors of Hoboken, Secaucus and Ridgefield, after a cooperating developer, Solomon Dwek, himself facing bank-fraud charges, paid bribes on tape. Some defendants were acquitted. Dwek got six years for his own $50 million fraud. [3][4]
In 2005 Representative William Jefferson was recorded taking cash; $90,000 was later found in his freezer. His 2009 conviction was cut back after the Supreme Court narrowed the meaning of an “official act” in 2016. [5]
These cases share ABSCAM’s strengths and its risk: a cooperator with his own legal problems, choosing whom to approach.
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