Buffalo, NY contractor CEO Louis Ciminelli formally pleaded guilty Jan. 6 to one count of wire fraud conspiracy in federal court in New York City as part of a plea deal that ends his prosecution in the state’s long-running “Buffalo Billion” pay-to-play scheme and other defendants. The former LPCiminelli boss was ordered to forfeit $1.6 million, pay a $250,000 fine and was sentenced to time served.
The request follows a 2023 US Supreme Court decision which overturned his initial 2018 conviction based on his legal theory, but remanded the case to a lower court. Ciminelli had been serving a 28-month sentence in a federal prison near Tucson, but was released when the high court took the case.
Federal lawyers sought a retrial in 2025 using a different legal approach that was challenged by Ciminelli’s lawyers, but the parties accepted the plea deal in late December.
Co-defendants Steven Aiello and Joseph Gerardi, executives of Syracuse, NY-based COR Development, also accepted similar plea deals last month related to their roles in the plan to build a state-funded industrial megaproject in Buffalo on a site that is now home to a Tesla factory. They had received Only 2.5 years. Alain Kaloyeros, former director of the Polytechnic Institute of the State University of New York at Albany, who had been convicted of Prison sentence of 3.5 years, he also pleaded guilty and paid a $100,000 fine.
