A disgraced city schools big who pushed tainted food to students in exchange for lucrative bribes dodged serious prison time Monday while crying to a judge — who decided he is “fundamentally good.”
Eric Goldstein, a former executive at the Department of Education, got off with a light sentence of just two years behind bars in Brooklyn federal court after pleading with the jurist, saying his life is already ruined.
A weeping Goldstein — who took kickbacks from a company that provided kids with oozing chicken laden with metal and plastic — said his family members “have suffered tremendously these past few years.
“I ask that you show mercy on them,” the convict said, reiterating a letter he sent the judge where he contended his family is “barely hanging on” because of the case.
“I hope you find a way to punish me without punishing them,” said Goldstein — who reportedly made millions of dollars off the “$3 billion” scheme.
Goldstein, 56, was facing more than six years behind bars after he and three defendants — Michael Turley, Brian Twomey, and Blaine Iler — were found guilty in 2023 of extortion and bribery for the scheme involving Texas-based meat supplier Somma Foods.
His lawyer, Neil Kelly, seemed to strike a chord with Judge Denny Chin when he painted the shamed city bigwig as a visionary who helped shape local public schools — and who had already allegedly been punished enough by having his face “splashed” on the front page of The Post and other publications.
“He has lost his career. He has been publicly pilloried,” Kelly said.
Goldstein pushed for “healthier food” in city schools, his lawyer claimed — but prosecutors have said he also lobbied for Somma’s shoddy chicken products in return for kickbacks that included nearly $100,000 in bribes and a share in the company.
Some of Somma’s offerings involved chicken drumsticks oozing a thick-red liquid and other chicken products that contained plastic, bones or metal.
Goldstein fast-tracked getting Somma foods into nearly 2,000 public city school starting in 2015 — to the point where the company was struggling to keep up with the demand after the millions of dollars’ worth of food orders were placed.
City school workers eventually discovered shipments with bleeding chicken and “wire-like” metal and blue plastic in the poultry.
A food-service manager even needed the Heimlich maneuver after choking on a bone in a chicken tender.
The DOE eventually removed all Somma products from schools in April 2017 after repeated complaints, prosecutors said at trial.
Brooklyn federal prosecutor Robert Polemeni said Goldstein was looking for “a way out of the DOE” by accepting the bribes and making millions of dollars — while Somma bigs were aiming to use the city lunch contract for resume-building to spread their products to cafeterias around the country.
“[Goldstein] ran a nearly $3 billion operation,” Polemeni said, This is not a maybe a corruption case, a maybe a bribery case. It is.”
Iler’s lawyer, James McGovern, tried arguing that it wasn’t a “typical public corruption case” because it didn’t have “gold bars or Bentleys” — while other defense lawyers claimed any jail time would destroy the lives of their clients’ families and children.
Those arguments seemed to sway the judge to let the quartet off with a lighter sentence — despite saying that the Goldstein and Co. knew “exactly what they were doing” when they kept pushing chicken on the menus.
“These four defendants are indeed fundamentally good men. They’ve lived good lives. I acknowledge the case,” the judge said before adding that they went “severely astray” from their normal lives.
Turley and Twomey were both sentenced to 15 months in prison, while Iler landed a year and one day behind bars.
Both Iler and Twomey will have to pay a $10,000 fine, too, the judge ruled.
All four defendants will surrender at a later date.
