Kaloyeros imprisoned where other convicted state officials served time – Times Union

BETHLEHEM Alain Kaloyeros has landed in a downstate federal correctional facility with floors that have been walked by a who's-who of corrupt New York officials.

The founder of Albany Nanotech, who was convicted in 2018 on federal bid-rigging charges, has started his 3-year prison sentence at a minimum-security camp in Otisville.

For years, the Orange County facility has been the incarceration home to some of the most powerful state officials ordered to serve time for federal crimes.

Former state Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver, who died earlier this year at a federal prison hospital in Massachusetts, reported to Otisville in 2020 to begin serving a term of more than six years.

Joseph Percoco, a former top aide to now ex-Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo who, like Silver, was sentenced to six years, also served time at Otisville for bribery and corruption.

State Senate Majority Leader Dean Skelos, 72, who was sentenced in October 2018 to 51 months in prison for his conviction on charges of bribery, conspiracy and corruption, also served a stint in the prison in Orange County.

Kaloyeros, of Slingerlands, had to finally go to prison after unsuccessfully appealing his case to the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, which includes the Manhattan court where Kaloyeros was tried on wire fraud and wire fraud conspiracy charges.

The 66-year-old is appealing his case to the U.S. Supreme Court, but he had to start serving his sentence as that process unfolds. His release date if he serves his entire sentence is March 7, 2025, according to the Federal Bureau of Prisons.

There are 57 inmates in the Otisville minimum-security camp. Kaloyeros will know at least two of them: Steven Aiello, 63, and Joseph Gerardi, 62, who worked for a Syracuse-area real estate development firm involved in the bid-rigging scheme with Kaloyeros.

The other person convicted under the same case was Louis Ciminelli, 66, a Buffalo developer and construction executive. Ciminelli is serving his time at a minimum-security camp in Tucson, Ariz.

The three upstate businessmen were large donors to former Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo. Prosecutors were able to show that Kaloyeros had manipulated the bid documents for hundreds of millions of dollars in state-funded high-tech construction projects in Buffalo and Syracuse to ensure that their companies would be picked as "preferred developers."

At the time, Cuomo had been trying get Kaloyeros to replicate the Albany Nanotech model in other upstate cities to create manufacturing jobs. Cuomo was never implicated in the case.

The two projects ended up being built in Buffalo and Syracuse. They are the Tesla solar panel and battery component factory in Buffalo, and the NexGen factory outside of Syracuse that makes power transistors using semiconductor manufacturing.

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Kaloyeros imprisoned where other convicted state officials served time - Times Union