Financial Felons: Jack Abramoff

This post is part of a feature in which he wonder whatever happened to some notorious financial felons. See all 17.

Unlike many of our leading financial felons, Jack Abramoff was not a trader or financier. Instead, he was primarily a political operative who managed to turn access and influence in Washington D.C. into a very profitable business. Actually, "criminal enterprise" is probably a better term, as Abramoff is currently serving a five-year prison sentence at a prison camp in Maryland.

Abramoff was a very busy guy and summarizing his misdeeds isn't easy. Highlights of his activities include bribing public officials, stealing from Native American tribes, tax evasion, wire and mail fraud, interfering with the court system in Guam, and defrauding the owners of a Florida cruise line. And then there's the allegation that he had a man killed in Florida.

Abramoff's main business was selling access to the Bush administration. His crimes reveal a lot about the legal and regulatory environment created during the Bush years, an environment that made Abramoff and so many other high-performing felons possible. His career serves as a kind of summary of all that is wrong with the Republican right -- what Bill Moyers calls the "reptilian right" that seeks power though ideological purity but only for the purpose of self-enrichment. Abramoff's power and riches were inseparable from his ties to the Republican Party, which he began serving as the chairman of the College Republican National Committee, joining a long line of operatives including the illustrious Karl Rove.