Joe Percoco, a crooked one-time powerful top aide and longtime pal of ex-Governor Andrew Cuomo, has been released from a halfway house after serving a prison sentence for a 2018 fraud conviction.
Percoco, 54, had been serving time at an upstate lockup before being transferred to an unspecified halfway house in December of 2021.
The U.S. Bureau of Prisons inmate tracker said Percoco was released from custody on April 21.
In 2018, Percoco — whom Cuomo once publicly likened to a brother — was found guilty of conspiracy to commit “honest services” fraud for pocketing more than $300,000 from execs at two companies doing business with the state.
His six-year sentence ended last week.
His freedom was first reported by WKBC 7 in Buffalo.
Percoco maintains that the payments he took in 2014 weren’t bribes because he was on leave from his government job and working for Cuomo’s re-election campaign at the time.
The U.S. Supreme Court heard an appeal on Percoco’s fraud conviction last fall and some of the justices seemed sympathetic to his argument.
Percoco was a Cuomo loyalist, considered his top political adviser and enforcer in government.
He also had worked as a personal aide to Andrew’s father, former three-term Gov. Mario Cuomo, who died in 2015.
During Andrew Cuomo’s eulogy at his father’s 2015 funeral, he likened Percoco to a brother, calling him “my father’s third son, who I sometimes think he loved the most.”
Cuomo’s sister, Madeline Cuomo, and former state Democratic Party chairman John Marino had helped raise funds for Percoco to appeal his conviction.
Percoco’s legal woes preceded Andrew Cuomo’s own downfall.
Cuomo resigned as governor under the threat of impeachment in August of 2021 after a slew of women accused the handsy governor of sexual misconduct, as outlined in a withering investigative report conducted by state Attorney General Letitia James’ office. He denied wrongdoing but stepped down anyway.