Federal prosecutors want the city’s corrupt former school food czar to get a taste for prison food after a stomach-churning bribery scheme that put tainted chicken on the plates of public school children.
Eric Goldstein and the three businessmen he conspired with are slated to be sentenced Sept. 8 in Brooklyn Federal Court, and prosecutors say the former Education Department bigwig still won’t acknowledge doing anything wrong after a jury served up a guilty verdict last year.
The feds are asking for 5¼ to 6½ years for Goldstein, and 4¼ to 5¼ years for the other three men. Their defense attorneys, meanwhile, have argued in court papers than none of the men should see prison time.
“I am writing to you as a deeply remorseful, broken, defeated, publicly humiliated man who is utterly terrified for what will happen to his two sons, former spouse and loved ones,” Goldstein wrote in an Aug. 23 letter to United States Circuit Judge Denny Chin. “I wear the unfading scarlet letter of felon and failure. Never did I think I would find myself in such an utterly pathetic and unenviable position.”
Goldstein compared his situation to an episode where, he said, he helped the mother of a young student with a life-threatening medical condition fight the city school bureaucracy for a year to get proper ambulance care.
“Just as that persistent mother begged us to do whatever we could do to continue the care that her son needed, so too I implore Your Honor to consider all the available sentencing options that you have,” he pleaded.
At the height of his power, Goldstein controlled thousands of employees and the city’s $1.2 billion yellow bus budget, plus a $550 million school food program and a $7.5 million school sports operation.
But he used that power to line his pockets, conspiring with Blaine Iler, Michael Turley and Brian Twomey, the owners of the Texas-based Somma Food Group, a Brooklyn Federal Court jury found in June 2023.
In a lengthy court filing, Goldstein’s lawyers played up his “fundamentally good character” and wrote, “Eric has lost not only an accomplished career, but his well-earned reputation as a dedicated public servant. … Eric has been crushed by the realization that all he will be remembered for is his involvement in this case.”
His attorneys, Kannan Sundaram and Neil P. Kelly of the Federal Defenders, also argued that he wouldn’t have done anything differently even if he hadn’t gotten any benefit from Somma.
“The evidence at trial established that Eric either had no involvement in SchoolFood’s decisions or that each of his actions was justified on the merits and that he would have taken the very same steps regardless of whether he received any benefit from Somma — because these actions were the right thing to do in his mind,” the lawyers wrote.
But prosecutors said that reasoning is part of why he and his co-defendants should spend time in prison.
“It is difficult to reconcile the defendants’ claim that there is no need for specific deterrence when they fail to acknowledge that they did anything wrong, let alone that they intended to, and did in fact, commit serious crimes,” prosecutors wrote. “The defendants claim that they ‘respect’ the jury’s verdict, but it is clear from their submissions that they believe they are the real victims of this prosecution, and that the government, jury and the Court all have it wrong.”
Prosecutors argued at trial the three men started an imported beef business in 2015 with Goldstein as a front to bribe him to get Somma’s food in the schools. He came to own 20% of the beef business, Range Meats Supply Company LLC, while the three execs owned 60%.
Goldstein, in turn, fast-tracked a yogurt parfait made by Somma to be served in schools in 2015, and did the same for Somma’s chicken tenders and drumsticks in 2016, prosecutors said.
But the chicken was wretched, and in one case, life-threatening. On Sept. 27, 2016, a school staff worker choked on a bone after eating a chicken tender, and needed the Heimlich maneuver to save his life, prosecutors said.
The Somma execs handed Goldstein their stakes in the beef biz, plus another $66,700, to get their chicken back into city schools after the choking episode, prosecutors argued.
During the trial, visibly grossed-out jurors saw pictures of bone- and metal-filled chicken tenders and chicken drumsticks oozing blood. And prosecutors repeatedly referred back to a 2015 statement Goldstein made to Iler: “I’m going to buy a lot of f—–g chicken from you guys. Let’s do the beef.”
The defendants and their lawyers described the beef deal as a legitimate business transaction, negotiated for months and reviewed by lawyers and accountants.
In one head-scratching moment, the defense team presented a photo of Goldstein and Iler, their faces beaming as they stood in a slaughterhouse, racks of beef behind them.
Goldstein testified as well, insisting he stuck to a set of “guiding principles.”
But Assistant U.S. Attorney Laura Zuckerwise referred to the business as a corrupt front for bribery, “what corruption looks like by sophisticated players.”
The jury found all four men guilty, and in February, Chin, who presided over the trial, denied their motion to overturn the verdict.
Their lawyers did not return messages seeking comment.