Carl Kruger is about to meet his fate.
The disgraced former state senator, who pleaded guilty to accepting nearly $1 million in bribes from deep-pocketed lobbyists, will be facing more than 50 years in prison when he walks into Manhattan Federal Court to be sentenced this afternoon — but law enforcement sources say he will most likely receive about 11 years in the big house.
Federal prosecutors demanded that the embattled pol spend no less than nine years in prison in a sentencing memorandum sent to Judge Jed Rakoff earlier this month, according to court documents.
“Kruger was a titan of the New York State Senate and chair of its Finance Committee, who, over a period of years, systematically and wantonly betrayed the public trust by soliciting hundreds of thousands of dollars in bribes,” federal prosecutors said.
Kruger has already asked Judge Rakoff for leniency and, in another sentencing memorandum — this one submitted by defense attorney Benjamin Brafman — portrayed himself as a deeply penitent man with a troubled childhood.
“My contrition, sadness and remorse is overwhelming,” Kruger wrote, before asking Judge Rakoff to consider his “birth into fatherless poverty” before carrying out his sentence.
Kruger accomplice Michael Turano — the former pol’s alleged lover and son of his longtime companion Dorothy Turano, the district manager of Community Board 18 — will also be sentenced for laundering Kruger’s bribe money through Olympian Strategic Development, a dummy corporation Turano founded.
Prosecutors said that Kruger used his dirty money to finance a lavish lifestyle that included a super luxury English-made Bentley automobile and the garish seaside mansion on Mill Island he shares with the Turanos.
The case against Kruger unfolded a web of deceit and lies last March, when federal prosecutors charged him with using his office as a personal piggy bank for lobbyists in exchange for his help on legislative matters.
Federal prosecutors said that lobbyists paid Kruger to:
• Delay the expansion of a bill that included a five-cent deposit on bottled water.
• Alter the Alcoholic Beverage Control Law so grocery stores could begin selling wine with expanded hours.
• Fight Walmart and other big-box stores from setting up shop in Brooklyn.
• Go to war with American Indian reservations to collect state sales taxes on cigarettes.
Reach reporter Colin MIxson at cmixson@cnglocal.com or by calling (718) 260-4514.
