An embattled Bronx City Council member is not just flexible with his ethics, federal prosecutors told a jury Thursday.
In the political corruption case against embattled Bronx City Councilman Larry Seabrook not only is there a $177 bagel, there is a sex manual.
In addition to a $177 bagel reimbursement, prosecutors claim the pol’s heavily padded expense account included a receipt for a marriage manual with the abbreviated title, “Better Sex Gd Flexi.”
The jury saw a receipt that shows that Seabrook bought the sex guide at a Borders Books at the same time he purchased a Tutankhamun sticker book for kids.
Feds say Seabrook shook down a Bronx businessman who was awarded a boiler contract at the new Yankee Stadium for $50,000 in bribes and funneled the cash to the North East Bronx Community Democratic Club, which he founded.
To launder the money, they claim, Seabrook then turned in receipts, some of them bogus.
The jury saw one of those doctored receipts which made a $7 bagel and diet Snapple, bought a shop near City Hall called Bits, Bites and Baguettes, look like it cost $177.
The club’s former treasurer, William Low, testifying for the government with a grant of immunity, said he never looked closely at the more than 1,600 receipts Seabrook submitted for reimbursement.
“I didn’t really scrutinize them,” he testified.
Another bogus receipt Seabrook submitted for reimbursement was from a Co-op City liquor store. Prosecutors said it was made to look like it was $144.
Another receipt showed Seabrook charged the club for a $705 video game system he bought three days before his son’s10th birthday.
Seabrook also collected $1,160 in expenses from the club for a 200 trip to Washington that had been reimbursed by the City Council.
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There are many others, like myself, that are grateful for your leadership in advocating a morally balanced sex education curriculum. Keep up the good fight. Unfortunately, change does not come overnight, or become effective simply because it is right and just. (Just look at the history of slavery!) It takes individuals to stand up and speak out.
Thanks.