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NY Post
New York Post
3 Jul 2023


NextImg:Disgraced NYC jails union boss getting back 10 pairs of Ferragamo shoes seized by feds

Disgraced jails union boss Norman Seabrook will be getting back 10 pairs of Salvatore Ferragamo shoes that the feds seized from him when he was busted in a corruption scheme seven years ago.

Seabrook, 63, will reclaim the designer footwear along with $7,700 in cash, a laptop, a cellphone and other personal effects that were taken from his Bronx home on June 8, 2016 when he was arrested for accepting bribes — including $60,000 in cash stuffed in a Ferragamo bag.

Federal prosecutors agreed to the return last week — four months after Seabrook was released from a West Virginia lockup on March 6 after serving a 22-month sentence.

Seabrook, the ex-president of the Correction Officers’ Benevolent Association, will not recoup the infamous $820 Ferragamo leather “murse” — or man purse — the feds found filled with cash, since it is considered part of the 2014 bribe he was found guilty of accepting.

He also won’t be getting back $21,000 — the “unspent amount” — of the $60,000 bribe, Manhattan federal Judge Alvin Hellerstein ruled. That leftover cash will instead go toward the $19 million judgment Seabrook was ordered to pay along with two co-conspirators.

Hellerstein ruled in 2021 that Seabrook could get the other seized possessions back, explaining that defendants are entitled to the return of their items if they were lawfully owned, if they aren’t contraband and if the government not longer needs them as evidence.

Norman Seabrook is getting back from the feds 10 pairs of Salvatore Ferragamo shoes.
Erik Thomas/NY Post

Seabrook’s lawyer Roger Adler told The Post the agreement to return Seabrook’s items was “routine” now that the case is over.

“It’s a routine on consent return of property,” Adler said Monday. “The property was undoubtedly taking up dust and occupying significant space in the FBI storage facility and it’s long overdue that it should be returned.”

Adler confirmed that the shoes — which can go for several hundred dollars a pair — belonged to Seabrook and said they were never used as evidence at trial.

Ferragamo bags

The Ferragamo bag that Seabrook notoriously accepted a $60,000 cash bribe inside will not be returned to him.

“I’m not quite sure why anybody would want to hold onto them other then the person who is wearing them,” Adler said.

Seabrook — who helmed the COBA for 19 years — accepted bribes from co-conspirator Murray Huberfeld in exchange for steering $20 million of the union’s pension money into Murray’s failing hedge fund, Platinum Partners, which eventually went under.

Jona Rechnitz, a shady donor of former Mayor Bill de Blasio who pleaded guilty to conspiracy, was a star prosecution witness against Seabrook at trial. Rechnitz testified that he delivered the 2014 handbag bribe at Huberfeld’s direction.

Salvatore Ferragamo messenger bag.

A source previously identified the bag that was seized from Seabrook’s home as a Ferragamo messenger bag.

Seabrook was convicted in 2018 at a second trial after the first one in 2017 ended with a hung jury.

During dramatic closing arguments at the retrial, prosecutor Martin Bell shoved three stacks of $100 bills — totaling $21,000 — into the designer bag saying, “there is still an ocean of room in that bag.”

The move echoed the famous closing arguments at OJ Simpson’s 1994 California murder trial where defense lawyer Johnnie Cochran shoved his hand inside a glove saying “If it doesn’t fit, you must acquit.”

New York Post cover including the Ferragamo messenger bag.

Prosecutors showed the Ferragamo bag to jurors at trial.
csuarez

Bell carried out the demonstration to address questions about whether $60,000 could even fit inside the bag.

Seabrook was originally sentenced to nearly five years behind bars but was granted compassionate release under the “First Step Act” reform law on the grounds that his sentence should be more in line with Huberfeld’s — who received a more lenient 13 months.

Huberfeld was handed two-and-a-half years behind bars after taking a guilty plea in the case, but an appeals court lowered his sentence.

Norman Seabrook.

Seabrook finished his 22-month sentence in March.
Erik Thomas/NY Post

Huberfeld and Rechnitz are also on the hook for the $19 million restitution judgment to the union.

The Manhattan US Attorney’s Office — which prosecuted the case — declined to comment Monday.