TPMMuckraker

Mass. State Senator Arrested for Extortion and Wire Fraud

After 13 months of federal investigation, Massachusetts State Sen. Diane Wilkerson (D) was arrested this morning. In a 43 page long affidavit — complete with pictures of hand-offs and money being stuffed into bras — the FBI alleged that Wilkerson took $23,500 in bribes to get a liquor license for the club Dejavu.

Below is the picture from the affidavit exhibits that shows Wilkerson shoving $1000 into her bra. This might beat out TPMmuckraker’s favorite photo of Sen. Ted Stevens’ bronzed salmon statue, but just barely.

Wilkerson has had a long and sordid history with the law which began in 1997 when she was sentenced to house arrest for failing to pay over $50,000 in income taxes. This afternoon, Wilkerson was stripped of her chairmanship of the Committee on State Administration and Regulatory Oversight.

In September, Wilkerson lost the Democratic primary, in which her candidacy was supported by Gov. Deval Patrick. In a statement following the arrest in the Boston Globe, Patrick said that the “initial reports are both troubling and sad. These are very serious charges and I will trust the judicial process to take them seriously.”

Editor & Publisher

Josh Marshall

Managing Editor

David Kurtz

Senior Associate Editor

Paul Werdel

Associate Editor

Tom Lane

Assistant Editor

Igor Bobic

Reporters

Brian Beutler

Carl Franzen

Sahil Kapur

Eric Kleefeld

Nick Martin

Evan McMorris-Santoro

Jillian Rayfield

Ryan J. Reilly

Benjy Sarlin

News Writers

Kyle Leighton

David Taintor

Pema Levy

Video Editor

Michael Lester

Research Interns

Christopher Hohmuth

Tom Kludt

Publishing Intern

Christopher O’Driscoll

General Manager & General Counsel

Millet Israeli

VP, Ad Sales

Bruce Ellerstein

Waldo Tibbetts

Bob Edmunds

Manager, Ad Operations and Sales Support

Versha Sharma

Deputy Publisher

Callie Schweitzer

Director of Technology

Eric Buth

Designer/Developer

Ni Mu

Matthew Wozniak