Longtime city employee John Lynch has been sentenced to 40 months in jail for taking a bribe in a scandal that came to rock Boston City Hall.
“Why would someone who has helped so many through the years yield to temptation? You have a loving family and so much support,” federal Judge Patti Saris said Friday before handing down the sentence. “I don’t get it. I don’t understand. … All of us are faced with temptations, and you yielded and committed a serious crime.”
Lynch, a 67-year-old former city real estate assistant director, pleaded guilty in September to taking $50,000 in cash bribes to get a floundering project passed in 2018. The scandal reverberated through the administration of Mayor Martin Walsh, leading to the sudden resignation of a zoning board member, a leave of absence for a top adviser and two different independent investigations.
Whether Lynch keeps the pension from his $134,602-a-year Boston Planning & Development Agency job is now up to the city’s retirement board. Lynch voluntarily resigned Aug. 16, shortly before he made the plea deal. The retired Lynch currently is receiving $6,398.56 a month from the city’s pension system, adding up to $76,783 a year.
Timothy Smyth of the Boston Retirement Board said the board typically takes three to six months after conviction to hear whether someone committed “violation of the laws applicable to his office or position.” If so, the pension system can claw back all of the money it has paid out since the date of the offense, though Lynch would get to keep money he’s had deducted to pay into the system.
Lynch, standing in front of a federal courtroom packed with supporters and his large family, spoke briefly, apologizing to the court, and also to his family “for the embarrassment and shame I brought upon them, and to the citizens of Boston whose trust in me I abused.”
Outside the downtown federal courthouse, Lynch, a black baseball cap pulled low, shook his head when asked further questions.
Lynch, who worked in city government for 43 years, has to report to jail by April 15 — so he’s able to be home for Easter the weekend before, if the wishes, Saris said. Lynch must forfeit the amount of the bribe.
Lynch’s attorneys had asked for a sentence of 30 months, though federal prosecutors wanted him locked up for four years, which would have been within 46-to-57-month range suggested by the federal sentencing guidelines.
Prosecutors described the case as a “betrayal of the public trust.”
“Mr. Lynch took bribe payment after bribe payment after bribe payment,” prosecutor Dustin Chao told the court. “The bribes were taken without hesitation, without reservation. The bribes were take in by Mr. Lynch wit h the ease of an experienced criminal.”
Defense attorney Henry Brennan said he’d submitted 30 letters in support of Lynch, and had received “many, many more.”