Milan Sentenced

Former Camden Mayor Milton Milan, who was convicted in December of 14 counts of corruption, was sentenced Friday to seven years, three months in federal prison.

U.S. District Judge Joel Pisano, who presided over Milan`s trial in the fall, told the 38-year-old, "You conspired with the corrupt and you consorted with the corruptible for your own personal agenda."

Milan was convicted Dec. 21 of 14 of the 19 counts against him, including laundering drug money, accepting payoffs from mobsters and city contractors and stealing campaign funds.

Milan has been held without bail at the Federal Correctional Institution at Fairton in Cumberland County.

Milan, wearing khaki pants and a white T-shirt, said he was sorry for his actions.

"I`d like to apologize to the residents of the city of Camden for using poor judgment. People believed in me and trusted me and I let them down," he said. "I`m sorry to my family and my children."

The day after his conviction, Milan was stripped of the office he had held since July 1, 1997.

A jury found that he had accepted up to $30,000 in payoffs from the Philadelphia-South Jersey Mafia, which was seeking city business; accepted thousands of dollars worth of home improvements from city contractors; used $7,500 in campaign funds for a vacation to Puerto Rico; concealed the source of a $65,000 loan from a city drug kingpin, and staged a burglary at the office of his contracting company to collect insurance payments.

The judge said Milan`s corruption was so systematic and so pervasive that he granted the government`s motion to increase his sentence from what it would have been under federal sentencing guidelines.

Pisano said Milan`s actions led to the erosion of public confidence in government.

Milan was also ordered to pay more than $14,000 in restitution.

(Copyright 2001 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.)

Article continues below

---

advertisement

---

Author: 6 ABC - Action News