## Facts

- Joseph P. Ganim served as mayor of Bridgeport, Connecticut (1991–2003).
- The government alleged a long-running scheme in which Ganim used his office to steer municipal business and other favorable official action to private parties in exchange for cash and in-kind benefits.
- Cooperating witnesses described an arrangement in which intermediaries received consulting fees from entities seeking city business and used portions of those funds to pay Ganim’s personal expenses and provide other benefits.
- Benefits included payment of entertainment, meals, clothing and other personal expenses; cash and checks routed through intermediaries; and an allegedly no-show or overcompensated job for Ganim’s wife.
- A central example involved privatization of the city’s wastewater-treatment facilities, where a contractor hired a consultant who, through diversion arrangements, funded benefits that flowed to Ganim.
- A jury in the District of Connecticut convicted Ganim of racketeering and racketeering conspiracy (RICO), Hobbs Act extortion under color of official right, honest-services mail fraud, federal-program bribery, related conspiracies, and filing false tax returns.
- The district court imposed a principal sentence of 108 months’ imprisonment.
- On appeal, Ganim primarily argued that the bribery-related counts and RICO predicates required proof tying each benefit he received to a specific, identified official act, and that the jury instructions were therefore erroneous.

## Issues

1. Whether Hobbs Act extortion under color of official right, federal-program bribery under 18 U.S.C. § 666, honest-services mail fraud based on bribes, and related RICO predicates require the government to link each alleged benefit to a specific official act.
2. Whether jury instructions permitting conviction based on a continuing “stream of benefits” exchanged for ongoing favorable official action correctly stated the quid pro quo requirement.

## Decision

- The Second Circuit affirmed the convictions and sentence.
- The court held the government need not prove a one-to-one linkage between each payment or benefit and a particular official act.
- It was sufficient to prove an overarching corrupt agreement in which the official received a continuing stream of benefits in exchange for being expected to exercise influence or perform official acts for the payor as opportunities arose.
- The court concluded the jury was properly instructed that conviction required a corrupt understanding that benefits were accepted in exchange for official acts or influence, which could be shown by circumstantial evidence and need not be express.
- The court noted that other appellate challenges were rejected separately and did not warrant reversal.

## Legal Principles

- For Hobbs Act extortion under color of official right, the offense is established by a public official’s knowing acceptance of payment in return for official acts; the quid pro quo element does not require identification of a specific act for each payment.
- Under 18 U.S.C. § 666, the statute does not require a benefit-by-benefit pairing with a particular act; a course-of-conduct exchange of benefits for influence in covered transactions can satisfy the corrupt intent element.
- Honest-services mail fraud predicated on bribes follows the same quid pro quo analysis when the theory is deprivation of honest services through bribery or kickbacks.
- A “stream of benefits” theory is valid where evidence shows a continuing exchange: benefits flow to the official with the expectation the official will act favorably for the donor as opportunities arise.
- A corrupt agreement may be tacit; it need not be formalized or explicitly stated, so long as the official understands the benefits are given in exchange for the exercise of official power.

## Conclusion

The Second Circuit upheld Ganim’s public-corruption and related RICO convictions, holding that the government may prove quid pro quo through a continuing stream-of-benefits arrangement in which an official accepts ongoing benefits with the understanding that he will act favorably for the payor as opportunities arise, without matching each benefit to a specific official act.


United States v. Ganim, 510 F.3d 134 (2d Cir. 2007)