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Former New Jersey insurance agent Jose Uribe will not go to prison for his role in the bribery scheme involving former U.S. Senator Bob Menendez, the senator’s wife, and two other businessmen.

U.S. District Judge Sidney Stein in New York sentenced the prosecution’s star witness to home confinement for six months and three years of probation after government prosecutors asked the court to consider that Uribe was a “model cooperator” in the case.

Uribe will also pay restitution of $866,947 to the Internal Revenue Service and forfeit $292,000 he gained from his crimes.

The sentencing was in line with recommendations from the Department of Justice (DOJ) and Uribe’s own lawyers that he deserved credit for his extensive cooperation with DOJ prosecutors, providing critical evidence, and his testimony that led to the convictions of the senator and his wife, Nadine, as well as two other businessmen, Wael Hana and Fred Daibes.

Uribe pleaded guilty to seven charges including conspiracy to commit bribery and extortion, honest services wire fraud, obstruction of justice related to insurance fraud investigations, and tax evasion related to several businesses he controlled.

Uribe admitted trying to influence Senator Menendez by paying for a Mercedes Benz convertible for Nadine so that the senator would try to influence officials to end investigations into a trucking business associate and an insurance agency employee suspected of involvement in insurance fraud.

Menendez was found guilty of bribery, extortion, and acting as a foreign agent of Egypt. Nadine Menendez was convicted of working with the senator to accept bribes of gold bars, cash, and the luxury car in exchange for the senator’s help with the businessmen’s regulatory and legal problems. Bob Menendez was sentenced to 11 years and his wife to four and one-half years in prison. Hana and Daibes were sentenced to eight and seven years, respectively.

DOJ called the charges against Menendez as “among the most serious, if not the most serious, charges of which a U.S. senator has ever been convicted in the history of the United States.” According to DOJ, to his credit, Uribe met with the government prosecutors 36 times–always in person and typically for multiple hours at a time–and “he was consistently thorough and helpful.”

Topics Agencies