Rep. Garcia and Wife Convicted in Wedtech Extortion Plot : Congress: The Bronx lawmaker is accused of using the defunct defense contractor’s payments to maintain a lavish life style.

Seven-term Rep. Robert Garcia (D-N.Y.) and his wife were convicted Friday of using political influence to extort payoffs totaling more than $172,000 in the last major case arising from the Wedtech Corp. scandal.

Garcia, the only congressman of Puerto Rican descent, and his wife, public relations consultant Jane Lee Garcia, were found guilty of two counts of extortion and one count of conspiracy by a federal court jury in New York after six days of deliberations.

The jury, however, acquitted the couple on four related counts involving bribery and accepting illegal gratuities.

Garcia, 56, is the second Bronx congressman and one of a several public figures who have been convicted for participation in illegal activities at Wedtech, a now-defunct South Bronx firm that started as a small machine shop but grew into a multimillion-dollar defense contractor by means of bribing Washington officials.

Prosecutors contended that Garcia and his wife used the Wedtech payments to help them maintain a lavish life style, which included a 65-acre horse farm in Upstate New York for which they reportedly paid more than $150,000.

As the guilty verdict was read by jury forewoman Heidi Vatter, Garcia stared stoically and clasped his wife’s hand tightly.

“I am, of course, saddened and disheartened by the jury’s verdict,” Garcia, reading from a prepared statement, said to reporters after the court session. “I am particularly disturbed by the verdict against my wife, whom I love dearly.”

His wife, formerly his administrative assistant and now head of her own consulting firm known as Leesonia Enterprises, said she was “disappointed in this country” but “that is the system--and I respect it.”

The Garcias face maximum penalties of 40 years in prison and a $500,000 fine for the extortion charges and five years in prison and a $250,000 fine for the conspiracy count.

Sentencing was scheduled for Jan. 5 by U.S. District Court Judge Leonard B. Sand, who presided over the four-week trial.

Garcia said he and his wife intend to appeal the verdict and that, within a few weeks, he will consult with his political advisers and Democratic Party leaders “about the best way of preserving my constituents’ interests.”

Garcia can continue to serve as a congressman while the House Ethics Committee reviews the trial evidence and debates what sanctions, if any, to take against him. Punishment could range from a mere reprimand to expulsion from the House.

Other key figures who have been convicted as a result of the Wedtech scandal include former Rep. Mario Biaggi (D-N.Y.), former Bronx Borough President Stanley Simon and E. Robert Wallach, a friend of former U.S. Atty. Gen. Edwin Meese III.

Garcia, a charismatic Latino leader who was first elected to Congress in 1978 from his poverty-ridden South Bronx district, was found to have extorted $76,000 in payments disguised as consulting fees to his wife and a $20,000 interest-free loan from Mario Moreno, Wedtech’s former chief financial officer.

The $76,000 was funneled in monthly payments of more than $4,000 through Ralph Vallone Jr., a lawyer in Puerto Rico who was a close friend of Garcia’s wife.

Vallone was charged with the Garcias but was later severed from the trial because of health problems.

Garcia had the money from the $20,000 loan transferred from Moreno through the congressman’s sister, the Rev. Aimee Cortese, a Bronx Pentecostal minister.

The conspiracy count also included a $75,000 investment that the wife of Wedtech founder John Mariotta made in a store Jane Garcia wanted to open in Puerto Rico, a $1,500 loan from Wedtech to Garcia and a $1,900 diamond-and-emerald necklace Mariotta gave to Garcia’s wife.

In interviews with reporters after the verdict, the forewoman and many other jurors said they did not believe the testimony from Moreno, the government’s chief witness.

But they added, in a strange twist, that they based their decision to convict on the evidence corroborating what Moreno had said in court.

In closing arguments, Garcia was described by his attorney, Robert Morvillo, as a “decent man” and a “good congressman” with an unblemished record--except for the $20,000 loan from Wedtech.

Morvillo admitted that the loan was funneled through Garcia’s minister sister so the congressman would not have to report it in his official financial disclosure statements.

“So, he made a mistake in judgment,” Morvillo said in summation in Manhattan federal district court.

But he denied that there was any taint of corruption on the loan. He also rejected prosecution charges that the $76,000 payments had been disguised as consulting fees to his wife’s firm.