Lastly, he cares about his kids.
A disgraced New York public schools official convicted of taking bribes and serving tainted food to the city's children says his family is “barely holding on” as federal prosecutors seek a six-year prison sentence.
“I beg for mercy,” former Energy Department official Eric Goldstein wrote in an Aug. 23 letter, trying to gain sympathy by describing how his two sons and ex-wife have suffered because of his crimes.
“Not for me specifically, [his family] Because I fear that without my financial, emotional and physical support, they will be swept away and drown.”
He also told the court: “These events have been devastating to my family beyond words. They are barely holding on.”
Goldstein's heartstring-tugging plea came after he and three other defendants — Michael Turley, Brian Toomey and Blaine Eyler — were convicted by a federal jury in Brooklyn in 2023 of racketeering and bribery charges in connection with a bribery scheme involving Texas-based meat supplier Soma Foods.
Despite repeated health problems, Goldstein, 56, recommended Soma Foods chicken products to city schools in exchange for bribes that included thousands of dollars in cash and company stock.
He even took money to pay a divorce lawyer, prosecutors said.
Jurors were shown shocking photos of some of Soma's offerings, including chicken thighs oozing bright red liquid and chicken products contaminated with plastic, bones and metal.
In his letter, Goldstein lamented that his family — his two sons and his ex-spouse — face a “practical life-or-death” crisis as a result of his actions and said a prison sentence would be an “overwhelming punishment” for his family.
“I can't imagine anything more painful than knowing that your actions and decisions could cause the eviction, separation and destruction of your family,” said Goldstein, who acknowledges that he wears “an unfading scarlet letter of felony and failure.”
Goldstein began rapidly delivering Soma food to about 2,000 schools in 2015. But the company received millions of dollars' worth of food orders and struggled to keep up with demand.
Then, between September 2016 and March 2017, the school reported bleeding from a half-inch “wire-like metal” and blue plastic shard found in chicken, and a food service manager choked on a chicken tender bone and had to undergo the Heimlich maneuver.
Prosecutors said in court that it took until April 2017 for the Ministry of Education to remove all Soma products from schools after repeated complaints from pupils and staff.
Goldstein's lawyers have asked the judge to spare him prison, citing his “fundamentally good character,” his 15 years of work at the Department of Education and more than 20 letters sent to him by family and friends.
“Eric is devastated to realize that his only memory will be his involvement in this crime. The experience that led to his incarceration and the subsequent devastation to his family have been too much for Eric to bear,” his lawyers said in the ruling.
But prosecutors, who are seeking a prison sentence of 63 to 78 months for Goldstein, have mocked his defense team for trying to downplay his role in the Chicken case.
“The notion that Goldstein, who was CEO of School Support Services, responsible for school lunches, athletics and busing, was not a high-level decision maker is frankly disingenuous and should be summarily rejected by the Court,” prosecutors said in the filing.
Prosecutors added that Goldstein's greed also harmed potential vendors doing business with the Department of Energy, because they “would expect that they too would have to make payments to Department of Energy officials” to get their products approved.
The other co-defendants each face prison terms of just over five years, according to federal authorities.
They are all scheduled to be sentenced on September 9 in Brooklyn federal court.
