The charges stated Leibell doled out $6.5 million in taxpayer funded "member items" to nonprofit groups he controlled from 2005 to 2010, according to records maintained by the Empire Center for New York State Policy and the Albany Project. He was sentenced to twenty one months in Federal Prison, after a Federal Judge rejected a plea by Leibell's lawyer to have the former Senator sent overseas to do "nation building work" in the Middle East instead of jailtime, a suggestion which outraged the media and local residents whom Leibell had betrayed by his actions.