Disgraced NYC public schools exec who turned blind eye to tainted food begs judge for mercy

Finally, he’s caring about children.

The disgraced New York public schools executive convicted of taking bribes and serving tainted food to city kids says his own family is “barely hanging on” — as federal prosecutors seek to lock him up for six years.

“I am pleading for mercy,” Eric Goldstein, a former official at the DOE, wrote in an Aug. 23 letter, in which he tried to get sympathy by describing how hard his two sons and ex-wife had been suffering because of his crimes.

“Not especially for me, but for [his family] because without my financial, emotional and physical support I fear that they will be cast adrift and drown.”

He also told the court: “These events have devastated my family in ways that I cannot explain in words. They are barely hanging on.”

Goldstein’s appeal for the heartstrings comes after he and three defendants — Michael Turley, Brian Twomey, and Blaine Iler — were found guilty by a Brooklyn federal jury in 2023 of extortion and bribery charges for the kickback scheme involving Texas-based meat supplier Somma Foods.

Goldstein, 56, pushed Somma Foods’ chicken products into city schools despite recurring health issues, in return for kickbacks that included thousands in cash and a share in the company.

He even got money to pay his divorce attorney, prosecutors have said.

Jurors were shown disturbing photos of some of Somma’s offerings, including chicken drumsticks oozing a thick-red liquid, and other chicken products that contained plastic, bones or metal in them.

In the letter, Goldstein bemoaned about how his family — two sons and a former spouse — face “actual life or death” from the fallout of his actions, and that it any jail sentence would be a “crushing punishment” to his family.

“I truly cannot imagine a more searing pain than knowing that your actions and decisions might cause the eviction, dissolution, and devastation of your own family,” Goldstein, who acknowledge he wears a “unfading scarlet letter of felon and failure,” said.

Goldstein fast-tracked getting Somma foods into nearly 2,000 schools starting in 2015. But the company had issues keeping up with the demand after millions of dollars worth of food orders.

Then from Sept. 2016 through March 2017, schools reported bleeding from half-inch pieces of “wire-like metal” and blue plastic found in poultry — and a food service manager needed to receive the Heimlich maneuver after choking on a bone in a chicken tender.

It took until April 2017 for the DOE to remove all Somma products from schools after repeated complaints by students and staffers, prosecutors said at trial.

His attorneys are asking the judge to keep Goldstein out of jail because of his “fundamentally good character,” citing his 15-year stint at the Department of Education and more than two dozen letters sent by family and friends.

“Eric has been crushed by the realization that all he will be remembered for is his involvement in this case. That this experience might culminate in his incarceration and the certain devastation of his family that would follow is often too much for Eric to bear,” his attorneys said in their sentencing submission letter.

But prosecutors, who are seeking to lock up Goldstein for 63 to 78 months, laughed at his attorneys trying to downplay his role in the chicken scandal.

“The notion that Goldstein, who was the Chief Executive Officer of School Support Services, responsible for SchoolFood, athletics and busing, was not a high-level decisionmaker is, candidly, disingenuous, and the Court should summarily reject,” prosecutors said in their own filing.

Prosecutors added that Goldstein’s greed also harms potential vendors doing business with the DOE because they will “wonder whether they too will need to make payments to DOE officials” to get their products approved.

Each of the other co-defendants face up to a little more than five years in prison, according to the feds.

They will all be sentenced September 9 in Brooklyn Federal Court.