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Former Correction Officers’ Benevolent Association President Norman Seabrook
By Michael V. Cusenza
Norman Seabrook, who not long ago wielded power as a highly influential city labor leader, was convicted of bribery last Wednesday in Manhattan federal court.
The former president of the Correction Officers’ Benevolent Association was retried this summer after his initial proceeding last November ended in a mistrial. Seabrook, 58, was found guilty of conspiracy to commit honest services wire fraud and honest services wire fraud.
Seabrook and Murray Huberfeld, 57, a founder and part-owner of Platinum Partners hedge fund, were indicted in July 2016. According to charging papers, Huberfeld paid Seabrook $60,000, and promised future bribe payments, in exchange for Seabrook’s investment of $20 million of COBA money in Platinum Partners. Huberfeld actually worked out a formula in which Seabrook would be paid a kickback of a portion of the profits from COBA’s investment that the hedge funder estimated could be between $100,000 and $150,000 per year.
Huberfeld pleaded guilty to fraud in May. He admitted to conspiring with an intermediary, Jona Rechnitz, to cause the fund to pay $60,000 to Rechnitz’s company by falsely representing that the money was payment for courtside tickets to eight New York Knicks basketball games. Instead, as Huberfeld knew, the actual purpose of the payment was to reimburse Rechnitz for having paid Seabrook for Seabrook’s efforts to get COBA to invest in Platinum. The hedge fund ultimately went belly-up, losing $19 million.
Huberfeld faces a maximum term of five years in prison at his sentencing in September.
“As long as there are public servants who put self-interest above the people they are sworn to serve, public corruption will remain a top priority of this office,” said Manhattan U.S. Attorney Geoffrey Berman.
COBA is the city’s largest correction officers union and the largest municipal jail union in the country. It represents more than 9,000 correction officers in the five boroughs, including at Rikers Island. Until his June 2016 arrest, Seabrook had been the union’s president for more than 20 years. According to federal prosecutors, Seabrook’s power over the affairs of COBA was rarely questioned by his Executive Board due to his ability to affect their assignments, pay, and hours. Seabrook’s control extended to the union’s finances, including the administration of its “Annuity Fund,” a retirement benefits program funded by the City that invests more than $70 million for correction officers’ retirements.
According to the indictment, on a 2013 jaunt to the Dominican Republic, Seabrook told Rechnitz that he worked hard to invest COBA’s money and was not getting anything out of it, and it was time that “Norman Seabrook got paid.”
Former Manhattan U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara said, “For a Ferragamo bag stuffed with $60,000 in cash, Seabrook allegedly sold himself and his duty to safeguard the retirement funds of his fellow correction officers. Norman Seabrook, as COBA’s president for over two decades, allegedly made decisions about how to invest the nest egg for thousands of hard-working public servants, based not on what was good for them, but on what was good for Norman Seabrook.”
Seabrook faces a maximum term of 40 years in federal prison when he’s sentenced in November.
