Jimmy Meng, the former state assemblyman from Queens, is now focused on trying to avoid jail time after he admitted to taking an $80,000 bribe, hidden inside a fruit basket, in exchange for a promise to help a friend buy his way out of a tax prosecution. Prosecutors want Meng to serve twelve to eighteen months for one count of wire fraud, but his attorneys said he shouldn’t have to because this was the “first time in his 70 years that he had a lapse in judgment.” Ironically, the friend Meng had promised to help, Eric Hu, did get a lighter sentence on his tax charge after all — for cooperating with authorities investigating Meng.
